COVID: SAGE Scientists’ Predictions for Christmas and ‘Back to Normal’ | Political news

All eyes are on Boris Johnson and what coronavirus restrictions will be in place in England when the national lockdown ends and how much they will relax over Christmas.

While some parts of the prime minister’s plan were announced overnight, he will spend Sunday working on details.

But Professor Calum Semple, who is part of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), spoke to Sky News to explain what the science says.

He told Sophy Ridge on Sunday about the kind of advice being offered to ministers on easing the rules over Christmas, when a vaccine could arrive and “a return to normalcy,” as well as how standards could be tightened. regional.

Splashed with a lot of optimism, these are his views on how the next eight months might unfold.

Will the rules be relaxed during Christmas? It is a good idea?

Actually, we cannot ban Christmas. Doing so would only lead to violations, and what are you going to do about it?

So instead what we’re looking at is reducing the R number, but also reducing the absolute number of cases.

There is very good news here: nationally, we are seeing cases in the community decrease and in those areas that entered Level 3 before the closure, we are already seeing that the tide is turning with the amount of hospital admissions and we will soon see the number of deaths is also reduced.

So there are many reasons to believe that when the lockdown is lifted, many areas will be able to move to lower levels and some areas will remain at higher levels.

So you have the run up to Christmas and hopefully if the system works we can relax some regulations for a few days. But there will be a price for that.

Does that mean we will have to pay with stricter restrictions five times longer?

Yes. In the round it is correct, but it should not be seen that it will be draconian restrictions, it will only extend the restrictions and higher level restrictions for some areas and perhaps all areas as a whole.

It is very difficult to know because we are talking about human behavior here.

We know that the restrictions work, we also know that we need to open up the economy, so there is a very difficult balancing act here.

When will the vaccines be released?

Vaccine priorities will inevitably be the most vulnerable and front-line health workers; they will not be academic like me.

I think we will see that phased out over Christmas and New Years because the vaccine has already been ordered and we got great results.

For the rest of the population, I think we will be looking towards the summer before there is a mass vaccination of the rest of the population.

And that’s what immunity will give us, the broad immunity that allows us to get back to normal.

So does that mean social distancing until next summer?

I doubt it because if we can vaccinate the frail and the elderly, that will take the pressure off the groups who will arrive at the hospital with serious illnesses.

We still have a core of women in their 20s to 50s, particularly in their 20s to 40s, where we are seeing three or four times more admission from these women than from men.

That really hasn’t been well explained, but it seems to match their roles in the hospitality, healthcare, and entertainment industries.

And many of them are going to have a prolonged COVID, so there will be a strong push to vaccinate throughout the community and not just for the elderly.

What stricter rules might companies face at the revamped regional levels?

Here are some real surprises: the construction industry.

I would have thought that working outdoors wouldn’t be a risk, but many people in construction are working indoors before buildings are essentially built. COVID-19-safe.

But other areas are exactly as you would predict: high risk around food production indoors, poorly ventilated, kept cool enough so there aren’t large air flows, and workers work closely together.

The others are pretty obvious, but not much can be done about it: health and social care is such a key part of society, we know it is associated with exposure and risk, but we cannot close that.

Have pub protection measures had a lot of influence?

Based on the data, we can still identify them as very high risk activities.

At the individual level, there will be people who have strongly adhered to the use of these protection mechanisms and who will have protected them.

But as in all things, the underlying activity is risky. It doesn’t take much, you just touch your mask when you shouldn’t have, and you pick up the scissors and fix your hair and suddenly you’ve broken the barriers. It’s not just a case of ‘oh, just hit a mask and a visor’, it’s about not touching the face mask, it’s about washing your hands.

It’s hard; It takes nurses and doctors years to learn how to do this correctly, and it is very, very difficult, if you are a member of the public, to start wearing PPE correctly.

Should the alcohol curfew be kept at 10pm?

History has a lot to teach us, and in the prohibition years, they tried to change the drinking hours, they tried to say that you could only drink if we ate and they are all very inventive – people find ways around it.

So I think playing outside of something like pub closing times is not an effective mechanism.

With pubs and clubs you have to look at all human behavior and take it into account, and I think that’s what was missing when it first appeared.

I think any iteration that follows will be better informed by understanding human behavior and not leading to an unintended consequence that can increase streaming, such as closing pubs early and everyone hitting the streets at once.