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The second lockdown in England may have caused a spike in coronavirus infections, as people rushed to see each other before the tough restrictions, the scientists suggested.
An influential REACT study by researchers at Imperial College London found coronavirus infections increased in early November, stabilizing and even declining in the previous weeks.
Scientists couldn’t say for sure if the spike had been caused by people leaving expecting a shutdown.
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As cases take several days to develop, the spike could only have been caused by infections in the last days of October.
But the leak that broke the news of the emergency shutdown landed on October 30, a Friday night, forcing Downing Street to advance its closure announcement to October 31, a Saturday.
“There was a lot of speculation on Friday,” said Professor Paul Elliot of Imperial College London, who chairs the REACT study. “It’s a very tight moment, but something happened.”
The new blockade came into effect on November 5 and will end on December 2.
REACT, which tests more than 100,000 randomly selected people, is one of the most authoritative estimates of the state of the outbreak in England.
The latest version, which covers the period from October 16 to November 2, describes the events that led to the shutdown.
It shows how events got out of hand in mid to late October, as the number of infected people accelerated rapidly, doubling as fast as every nine days, and cases increased in every age group and region of England.
By the end of October, the researchers estimate, 100,000 new people were infected each day.
During the last days of October, the growth of the outbreak began to slow down.
Cases were still high, which warranted strict responses. But the virus was no longer increasing at the same rate.
In some regions of the country, Yorkshire and the Humberside, for example, the prevalence dropped substantially.
In the south of England, rapid growth leveled off, although in other areas it continued to increase.
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The introduction of the government tiered system may have played a role, the researchers said, but the drop was mostly even across the country.
Then, just when it seemed to be going in the right direction, the outbreak in England jumped again, just before the start of the lockdown.
Professor Elliot said he was not sure that researchers ever knew why the outbreak changed exactly when it did.
The same applies to the unexpected rebound that took place in early October.
We may never know why it happened, or in fact, if it was more than an oddity caused by an inadvertent quirk in data collection. We have only informed speculation and the hard-hitting coincidence of events.
Yesterday, we received the news that Lee Cain, the prime minister’s communications director, was resigning, reportedly after tensions in Downing Street over that shutdown leak.
At the time, it felt like a hugely momentous moment – as the weeks have passed, it has only become more meaningful.
