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Other coronavirus outbreaks and ongoing blockages are unavoidable under government plans to ease restrictions and send people to work in England without a sound strategy to suppress Covid-19, an independent group of scientists warned.
Experts convened by Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser, called on ministers to reconsider the “dangerous” strategy of handling the spread of Covid-19 and adopting decentralized testing, tracking and widespread isolation to tackle the epidemic across the Kingdom United.
In what was described as a quick response to the government’s handling of the outbreak, the group added to mounting criticism of the unclear message to “stay alert” and said the public health council to “control the virus” was an “empty catchphrase”.
King established the independent alternative to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) amid concerns about the transparency of independent scientific advice reaching ministers through Sage.
In a report released Tuesday, the group warned that simply ensuring that the NHS was not overwhelmed was counterproductive and potentially dangerous. Without forceful measures to suppress the spread of infection “we will inevitably see a faster return of local epidemics that will result in more deaths and possible partial or national blockages,” they said.
At an online press conference to launch the report, King said the group deemed it “silly” to have a vaccine available any time soon, and said the government should prepare for recurring local outbreaks “for at least a year.”
The report, which includes 19 key recommendations, will be sent to Downing Street, Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser co-chaired by Sage, the prime ministers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and Jeremy Hunt, the president of health. select committee.
Experts urge ministers to reverse the March 12 decision to abandon efforts to test, trace and isolate cases of Covid-19 and replace the existing centralized testing approach, which is highly dependent on the private sector. Instead, the group proposes a decentralized strategy that places general practitioners and local health teams at the center of outbreak control. The report says “over reliance on outsourcing” is unsustainable.
Under the proposal, local monitoring for coronavirus cases would target particular high-risk settings, such as hospitals and care homes, and would serve as an early warning for outbreaks that would immediately trigger widespread testing, contact tracing, and isolation of infected.
“There must be, as we come out of the shutdown, a way to take the tests to settings where there may be an immediate local response,” said Deenan Pillay, professor of virology at University College London and a member of the King group. “This cannot be done centrally. You need your GPs and local healthcare workers and everything else at stake. “
He added: “This is moving from the national top-down tests we have now to something much more responsive and flexible. Infections come and go, this is how they work. You monitor a signal locally, maybe a few people in a nursing home, and then make a local decision with the public health team to go and do more tests. ”
As a first step, the government should quickly invest in measures to prevent the virus from spreading in high-risk settings, such as nursing homes and hospitals, migrant prisons and detention centers, and homes that are overcrowded or contain multiple generations, they say. The experts. .
The report continues to criticize the government’s reliance on “inaccurate, incomplete and selective data” and confusing messages, particularly the new “alert” message, noting that ministers do not appear to be listening to advice from behavioral science advisers.
“It is not clear what people are meant to be alert to, nor indeed what they should do if they are alert to something. Similarly, “checking the virus” is an empty catchphrase without an indication of how to do it. “Saving lives” is not controversial, but without context the rest of the message is likely to have little impact, “the report says.
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Zubaida Haque, group member and deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, said low income and housing benefits must be strengthened to protect the most vulnerable. He added that many low-income workers who are in jobs that put them at particular risk of contracting Covid-19 are now being forced to return to work.
Experts in the group include Professor Anthony Costello, former Director of the World Health Organization, Professor Susan Michie, Director of the Center for Behavior Change at University College London, and Professor Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemiology and public health of the Royal Society. section and advisor to the Irish government.
Even with an effective vaccine, the virus is likely to remain in circulation for the foreseeable future as no vaccine is 100% effective and not everyone on the planet will be vaccinated. In that situation, the virus will join the list of infections that humans learn to live with in other ways, Pillay said.
“While we want the vaccine to work and to be the end of it, we must prepare for something that is endemic in our society,” he said. “We know that it is highly transmissible, we know that it can cause serious illness, and therefore monitoring is necessary to treat these sporadic outbreaks.”
