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The daily number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK will rise from 34 to 100 a day in three to four weeks, warned an expert from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
Infectious disease modeling expert Professor Graham Medley said there is now little that can be done to prevent daily deaths from rising to 100, but “we must ensure that transmission falls now” to prevent the number from rising even more.
Medley told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “The treatments [for Covid-19] they have improved, the way the virus is transmitted is going to be different, but it is nevertheless a dangerous virus and will inevitably cause some deaths.
He said that even if only 0.8% of infections lead to deaths, up from 1% estimated in February and March, “it still means that we are going to see an increase in deaths.”
He projected that the UK would see 100 deaths a day in three to four weeks depending on how many cases the country is seeing now (there were 6,874 new cases on Friday), a figure that he said was doubling every 10 days.
“To prevent that process from escalating again, then we must make sure that transmission is reduced now, because that doubling time will continue. The things we do now will not prevent 100 people from dying a day, but it will prevent that from progressing much further. “
On Friday, new coronavirus restrictions were announced for Leeds, parts of Wales and more cities in the North West, bringing the number affected by stricter measures in the UK to 21.3 million.
The Welsh government has announced that Cardiff, Swansea and parts of Llanelli in South Wales will be subject to local closures from this weekend. Meanwhile, restrictions on domestic mixing were announced for Blackpool, Wigan, Stockport and Leeds.
Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething said the situation was “real and very dire”, with transmission of the coronavirus driven by households mixing indoors and in pubs.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Saturday, he said: ‘I would say we are in a comparable place at the end of February and of course we ended much of the NHS activity about two weeks later, we were in a total lockdown three and a bit more late “.
Councilor Judith Blake, Leeds City Council Leader, said the new lockdown restrictions may not be enough to stop the spread of the virus on their own.
“We know that the restrictions themselves will not only work on their own, but must be part of a series of measures,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
“The important message we know from other areas is that there is a lot of confusion, lack of clarity, particularly in areas where there are different rules in one district and the neighboring district has another. This has to be a wake-up call for people. “
