THE Covid situation could “turn bad” very quickly if a close eye were not kept on it, Professor Chris Whitty has warned, pointing to how infection rates have risen across the EU.
Appearing before the Commons Science and Technology Committee, the UK Government’s Chief Medical Officer said: “A lot of people may think that this is all over.
“I would encourage them to look at what is happening in continental Europe at the moment where a lot of countries are going back into rates going up and having to close things down again having not been in that situation before.
“It’s very easy to forget quite how quickly things can turn bad if you don’t keep a very very close eye on it.”
Prof Whitty pointed out how the great majority of people who could drive a surge in transmission were not yet vaccinated and would not be by Easter.
“So, the idea that that is the sort of get-out-of-jail card in terms of a surge of transmission is to misremember where in the age spectrum the drive of transmission is, and it’s in younger adults, not in those who have so far been vaccinated, by and large,” he stressed.
The CMO for England defended the UK Government’s approach of allowing five-week time intervals between steps of unlocking in order to assess their impact on the virus, saying leaders in many countries had eased off too quickly in the past.
He told MPs: “If you look at the history of this all around the world, the history of this is not full of countries and individual leaders wishing they had done more, faster.
“It’s full of leaders who wished they had acted quicker and then been more careful as they take things off.”
Prof Whitty insisted it was important to wait for four weeks of data before making a decision on the next step.
Without such a gap, he explained: “It’s pretty doubtful you would be in a position where you are going to be able to say: ‘these data look so fantastically better, please take more risks here.'”
The expert went on: “That seems a very unlikely situation, given how large these blocks of activity are.”
Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, echoed this view, saying: “If you truncate that, you are essentially flying blind. You might feel ‘oh, I can smell it going in a certain direction, it looks like this,’ but you really want to know.”
He told MPs it was inevitable that coronavirus cases would increase as restrictions on social mixing were eased.
However, he made clear Boris Johnson’s road-map for easing lockdown in England was in line with the principles set by the Sage scientific advisory panel and “consistent with minimising that increase as you open things up”.
Sir Patrick explained: “In terms of the principle of trying to go at a pace that is consistent with the vaccine rollout, so you have got coverage as you begin to release, this is broadly in line with what the modelling suggests is a way to do it that would be better than going fast.
“The sequencing of opening outdoor things before indoor things is consistent with the advice Sage has given.”
He told the committee: “It is sort of inevitable that as you start to get mixing going again you will see an increased spread; this is how the disease spreads.
“So, there will be increases and pressure on R and pressure on transmission as you open things up.”
Prof Whitty suggested the measures for England pencilled in for May 17, when indoor mixing of up to six people could be allowed, involved “significant risks”.
He said he would “strongly advise” against any attempt to “concertina” the five-week interval between steps.
The April 12 measures for reopening shops and outdoor hospitality were “a very big block”, noted the CMO, adding that the key date for allowing the reopening of indoor hospitality from May 17 “is a very significant block with a lot of stuff that is indoors for the first time, that is the point when we are really going to start to see some very significant risks accumulating, potentially”.
Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics, said a total of 145,647 deaths had occurred in the UK by February 26 where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.
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