Second wave peaks just before Christmas with ‘massive spike’ in deaths

Several cabinet ministers are believed to have backed calls by government scientists for a second national shutdown, amid warnings that the second wave could peak just before Christmas.

Boris Johnson is considering new strict restrictions in England just days after experts warned that half a million people are infected with Covid-19 each week.

The prime minister could announce the measures, which would shut down everything except essential stores and educational settings for a month, on Monday, according to The Times.

Ministers from the government’s Covid-19 task force were reportedly briefed by the Joint Center for Biosafety last week and shown heat maps that painted a “ terribly bleak ” picture of the situation in the north, where infections are about to increase. control despite regional restrictions.

Visit our Live Blog for the latest updates Live Coronavirus News

A government source told the newspaper that the maps illustrated the spread of the coronavirus in various age groups in the north, from orange to black, where confirmed cases were the highest.

They added: “All age groups were black, including those over sixty.”

The source said experts “were talking about hospitalizations exceeding the peak of the first wave early next month.”

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam is also said to have warned ministers that control measures must be implemented ‘hard and fast’ to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed in the winter.

The Times reports that a projection presented to Downing Street indicates that without significant interventions there could be a “massive increase” in deaths on Christmas Eve.

So far, Johnson has resisted pressure from scientists and Labor to introduce a “circuit breaker” lockout to curb Covid-19 cases.

But some cabinet ministers and scientific advisers at the top of the government now believe that it is inevitable that England will follow France in a second national blockade, the newspaper reports.

Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), speaking in a personal capacity, told BBC Radio 4’s Today show on Saturday that the coronavirus is ‘running rampant’ in all age groups.

He said: ‘For the naysayers who don’t believe in a second wave, there is a second wave.

“And, unlike the first wave, where we had a national blockade that protected large sectors of society, this outbreak is now spreading across all age groups.”

Professor Semple told BBC Breakfast that “the tiered approach to restrictions has not worked particularly well.”

When asked what could be achieved with a four-week lockdown, he said: ‘If that is applied nationally and it is enforced, I would see a dramatic drop in hospital admissions and that’s in four weeks.’

Sage’s fellow scientist, Professor John Edmunds, said the only way to have a “relatively safe” Christmas is to take “strict” steps now to reduce the incidence of the virus.

He said that the current strategy ‘guarantees a high incidence throughout the country during the winter’ and that, although the restrictions do not have to be national, there is a danger that, even in the Southwest, where cases are less, the hospitals are under pressure. in a few weeks.

Professor Edmunds said: “ I think the only real way for us to have a relatively safe Christmas is to reduce the incidence because otherwise I think Christmas is very difficult for people – no one wants to have an interrupted Christmas holiday period. where you can’t see your family and so on.

“So I think the only way that can be done safely is to reduce the incidence, and to do that we have to take action now and that action has to be strict, unfortunately.”

All parts of England are on track to eventually end up at the toughest level three restrictions, government scientists believe, while deaths could reach 500 a day in a matter of weeks.

They also trust that there are more than 50,000 new cases of coronavirus in England every day.

A senior government scientific advisor said: “It is definitely too late to think that the two-week circuit breaker alone will fix this. It would reduce it a bit, but it would not be enough to reduce (the R value).

“A two-week circuit breaker would have an effect, but now it almost certainly would need to go on longer to have a significant effect.”

While plans are also said to be in place to introduce an even tougher ‘level four’ to try to address surges at the regional level, another Cabinet source told The Times that ‘no one credible’ is now resisting the idea of ​​blocking measures at the national level.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check out our news page.