England’s chief medical officer has said the UK is officially “past the peak” of its second wave, providing some optimism as the country continues its third lockdown without an end date in sight.
During Wednesday’s press briefing from Downing Street, Chris Whitty added that cases should continue on a “downward slope” as long as people continue to follow the rules on social-distancing.
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The Prime Minister said infection levels remained “forbiddingly high” and they did not want to be “forced into reverse”.
On Wednesday Covid cases were at 19,202, and there were 156,771 cases over the past seven days – a drop of 25.1 per cent from the week before. Daily deaths stood at 1,322, while the number of patients admitted into hospital over the past seven days dropped by 22.2 per cent to 20,946.
While confirmation that the peak has passed is positive news, cases, deaths and hospital admissions continue to be high, experts say. The country is now in a balancing act of vaccinating as many people as possible, and driving transmission down through social distancing and contact isolation, which is still needed right now to ensure restrictions can be lifted at some point.
If all goes to plan we could see a similar situation to last summer repeated for this year, with restrictions eased to a considerable level.
Numbers starting to come down
“If you look at the numbers you can see that we are at the peak of the number of people in hospital and that the numbers of newly admitted patients is also coming down,” Dr Christine Tait-Burkard, research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, told i.
With what we’re seeing right now and the current restrictions, Dr Tait-Burkard thinks it makes sense that cases and hospital admissions will come down further.
The next step she argues, is bringing back school children from the end of February in a staggered way.
‘Long way from complete unlocking’
The data may be positive but experts urge caution.
“We’re a long way away from complete unlocking,” Professor Karl Friston, Professor of Imaging Neuroscience, UCL told i.
A panellist on the ‘Independent SAGE’ with special responsibility for modelling, he added that there are a few things that determine the fluctuation in virus transmission. “Social distancing, and restrictions are probably the key determinant in shaping the the pandemic trajectory, which is why we need to keep them going to keep Covid rates down,” he said.
“It’s going to be a balancing act. So as transmission rates are suppressed through vaccination, there will be a balanced and gradual unlocking of restrictions.
“If we wait another few months, then we’re likely to return to levels that we saw last summer by summer of this year. And hopefully, if we reached the herd immunity threshold, then we could indeed return to pre Covid levels by winter.”
Vaccination key
Vaccination is key to this wave, as it will go hand-in-hand with social distancing measures to drive down transmission and unlock our route out of lockdown.
“If you look at Israel for example, they really started to see an effect from vaccination once they reached 60 per cent of their population over 60s. That really began to show a big difference on their outbreak,” Dr Tait-Burkard said.
Professor Friston said there is already evidence vaccination is having an effect on the pandemic in the UK. He warned that alongside the rollout, the test and trace system needed an overhaul to ensure management of the virus is as efficient as it should be.
— to inews.co.uk
