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Prime Minister Urged to Take COVID Action ‘Today’ to Curb Rise in UK Cases
Boris Johnson must act now, not next week, to tackle a second wave of coronavirus infections in the UK, said a senior university professor.
When asked if he thought a second national lockdown is at stake, Dr Bharat Pankhania, Senior Clinical Professor at the University of Exeter, told Sky News: “I hope it never happens because I don’t think the UK has the resistance for a national blockade, these are words.
“It’s blindingly obvious that if you wanted to keep case numbers low, you would keep your movements among other human beings to a minimum.
“It’s as simple as that.
“This is a person-to-person spread of the infection, so we’ve come up with all sorts of things like the ‘rule of six’, the 10pm curfew and all that.
“And the only thing, the elephant in the room, that we don’t address is ‘keep your distance from other humans, move with as few humans as possible.’
“That’s as simple as it is.”
Proposals are being made for a short-term national “break in the loop” of restrictions, which could see essential travel to schools and workplaces continue, but restaurants and bars would close, or perhaps operate in restricted hours, and different households would be asked not to mix at all.
When asked if this would work and slow the spread of the virus, he replied, “I would love to say yes, but what we learned from the first crash was that the base number, that is, the background level of the circulating virus, was still hovering in an uncomfortably high level.
“So where is the evidence that a ‘circuit interruption’ – that is, a short and abrupt shutdown – will reduce the number of cases?
“Our case numbers have been reluctant to go down because we simply cannot have a total lockdown on the way the UK has been running.
“So unless there is a really tight shutdown in the South Korean style or even in the China style and people don’t move between groups, it’s not going to happen.”
He continued: “Also, we have another puzzle, the schools are open and we know, we all accept, that schools must work, so if the schools are open it means that there are many things open. It also means that there will be a generation of new cases in the school environment.
“I think my simplest measure over a long period of time is a good measure … why not give some good public health advice which is, ‘this is spread from person to person, keep your circulation low among others human beings’ ‘.
“The bottom line is that we take personal and mutual responsibility, we say to ourselves ‘every action I’m about to take, is it risky?’ If so, don’t do it. “
“My advice to Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not to sit down and say ‘we’re going to do something next week.’ It’s tomorrow, it’s today.
“You say, ‘from today on please reduce your circulation in pubs, restaurants, transport, offices and all those places where the infection is transmitted’.
“It’s as simple as that.”
