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Boris Johnson must act now, not next week, to tackle a second wave of coronavirus infections in the UK, an infectious disease control expert warned.
Dr Bharat Pankhania, Senior Clinical Professor at the University of Exeter, told Sky News that it is “dazzlingly obvious” what needs to be done to stop the current surge in COVID-19 cases, and that is to minimize contact. one to one between individuals.
He said: “My advice to Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not to sit down and say ‘let’s do something next week.’ It’s tomorrow, it’s today.”
“You say, ‘from today please reduce your circulation in pubs, restaurants, transport, offices and all those places where the infection is transmitted’. It is as simple as that.”
His warning comes when Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon demanded a Cobra meeting in the next 48 hours.
“We know from experience at the beginning of the year that speed and decisiveness of action is important in the fight against COVID,” he tweeted.
She said the Scottish government “will seek to make thoughtful decisions as quickly as possible” and urged everyone in Scotland to be “more careful” and “minimize interactions with other households.”
New confirmed daily cases reached 4,322, the highest since May 8, Friday, and another 27 deaths were recorded. The R number, which shows the spread of the virus, is now between 1.1 and 1.4.
Fears are growing that daily case numbers may, within a few weeks, reach March and April figures if the government does not take decisive action now.
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 he thought a second national lockdown was at stake, Dr Pankhania told Sky News: “I hope it never happens because I don’t think the UK has the stamina for a national lockdown. 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.”
When asked if he thought the plans to “short-circuit” the virus would work and slow the spread of the disease, he replied, “I’d love to say yes, but what we learned from the first lock was that the base number, that is, the background level of circulating virus, continued to float at 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 added: “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. “
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His sentiments were shared by Professor Neil Ferguson, the scientist whose model led the government to order a national shutdown in March, who said ministers must act “sooner rather than later” if they want to avoid a second wave that leads to more deaths.
“Right now we are at the infection levels we were seeing in this country at the end of February,” he told BBC Radio 4 Today.
“If we leave it for another two or four weeks, we will go back to the levels that we saw more like mid-March. That is clearly going to cause deaths because people will be hospitalized.
“I think some additional measures are likely to be needed sooner rather than later.”
Case trajectories in the UK, France and Spain
The rate of cases per 100,000 in Spain, France and the United Kingdom
He added: “In a sense, we have a perfect storm right now of people, as they have been told, getting back to normal, schools reopening, an increase in cases, so the testing system is under pressure.
“So, unfortunately, we have to roll back the relaxation of the measures a bit and reduce contacts between the population.”
It is understood that Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s top scientific adviser, warned the prime minister at a meeting on Wednesday night that the UK is now some six weeks behind France. and Spain and in danger of seeing a substantial increase in the number of cases in mid-October if the virus is not controlled.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer has joined the Prime Ministers of Scotland and Wales in summoning the Prime Minister for Cobra discussions.
Sir Keir said: “Now you need to take swift and decisive action at the national level to deal with this – you can’t afford to be slow.”
