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UK’s virus adviser calls for way out of COVID-19 lockdown
By CHRIS SMYTH
THE TIMES
11:17PM APRIL 4, 2020
Source:https://www.theaustralian.com.au/wo...n/news-story/eff3ebd5ba198446b986477de0803fdd
Britain has “painted itself into a corner” with no clear exit strategy from the coronavirus epidemic and needs to reconsider herd immunity, according to a senior government adviser.
A prolonged lockdown risks causing more suffering than the virus itself, Graham Medley, the government’s chief pandemic modeller, has warned. He said that the country needed to face the trade-off between harming the young versus the old.
Professor Medley, a member of the key scientific body that is guiding the government’s response, told The Times that Britain must consider allowing people to catch the virus in the least deadly way possible rather than letting unemployment, domestic violence and mental ill health mount indefinitely.
His modelling showed that letting people return to work or reopening schools would allow the pandemic to take off again and no way had been found of easing the lockdown while controlling the virus. Only those working outside might be safe to go back to their jobs, he found.
An antibody test, which the government is hoping will prove a “game-changer”, could help but was not working and such a method had never previously been used to manage an epidemic, he said.
His warning came after 684 more people were confirmed yesterday to have died from the virus in Britain’s biggest daily rise, taking the total to 3605.
In other developments:
- The Queen will address the nation on Sunday (Monday AEST), only the fifth time that she has done so outside her Christmas broadcast.
- Britain’s service industry is collapsing at a “harrowing” pace, according to data pointing to a recession steeper than that of the 1930s.
- Premier League clubs are to ask players to take a 30 per cent pay cut to protect jobs at football clubs.
- The deputy chief medical officer said there was no evidence that the public wearing face masks would slow the spread of the virus.
- Two nurses in their 30s died of coronavirus in the 24 hours up to last night (Friday).
Boris Johnson, who will continue to self-isolate with coronavirus symptoms including a temperature, used a video message to urge people to stick to the lockdown and not abandon social-distancing rules during what is expected to be a sunny weekend.
“Particularly if you’ve got kids in the household, everybody may be getting a bit stir-crazy, and there may be just a temptation to get out there, hang out and start to break the regulations. I just urge you not to do that,” the prime minister said, adding: “Please, please stick with the guidance now.”
Professor Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). He is chairman of SPI-M, the Sage committee overseeing mathematical models.
“This disease is so nasty that we had to suppress it completely,” he said. “Then we’ve kind of painted ourselves into a corner, because then the question will be what do we do now? We will have done three weeks of this lockdown so there’s a big decision coming up on April 13. In broad terms are we going to continue to harm children to protect vulnerable people, or not?”
It is understood that work is under way to quantify health harms caused by lockdown, although this has not yet reached ministers. They have said this trade-off has not featured in government decision-making and Downing Street is giving all its attention to social distancing and building NHS capacity.
While declining to comment on Sage discussions, Professor Medley said: “It’s certainly been a concern from the outset and something that is increasingly being considered.”
Nearly a million people have applied for benefits in the past two weeks and millions more have been furloughed.
Professor Medley said: “The measures to control [the disease] cause harm. The principal one is economic, and I don’t mean to the economy generally, I mean to the incomes of people who rely on a continuous stream of money and their children, particularly the school closure aspect . . . There will also be actual harms in terms of mental health in terms of domestic violence and child abuse and in terms of food poverty.”
He added: “If we carry on with lockdown it buys us more time, we can get more thought put into it, but it doesn’t resolve anything - it’s a placeholder.”
The introduction of the lockdown on March 23 is on course to avoid a catastrophic peak, but the virus will start spreading again once it is eased, it is believed. In the absence of a vaccine, viruses only stop spreading when enough people have been infected that they can no longer pass from person to person, a concept known as herd immunity.
Although never a government goal, this was tacitly accepted as inevitable by an initial strategy designed to manage a peak in the summer, when the NHS would be better able to cope. Headlines suggesting that ministers wanted 60 per cent of people to get the disease to protect the economy led to the idea being sidelined. Latest estimates suggest that almost 70 per cent of the population need to contract the virus to ensure herd immunity.
By CHRIS SMYTH
THE TIMES
11:17PM APRIL 4, 2020
Source:https://www.theaustralian.com.au/wo...n/news-story/eff3ebd5ba198446b986477de0803fdd
Britain has “painted itself into a corner” with no clear exit strategy from the coronavirus epidemic and needs to reconsider herd immunity, according to a senior government adviser.
A prolonged lockdown risks causing more suffering than the virus itself, Graham Medley, the government’s chief pandemic modeller, has warned. He said that the country needed to face the trade-off between harming the young versus the old.
Professor Medley, a member of the key scientific body that is guiding the government’s response, told The Times that Britain must consider allowing people to catch the virus in the least deadly way possible rather than letting unemployment, domestic violence and mental ill health mount indefinitely.
His modelling showed that letting people return to work or reopening schools would allow the pandemic to take off again and no way had been found of easing the lockdown while controlling the virus. Only those working outside might be safe to go back to their jobs, he found.
An antibody test, which the government is hoping will prove a “game-changer”, could help but was not working and such a method had never previously been used to manage an epidemic, he said.
His warning came after 684 more people were confirmed yesterday to have died from the virus in Britain’s biggest daily rise, taking the total to 3605.
In other developments:
- The Queen will address the nation on Sunday (Monday AEST), only the fifth time that she has done so outside her Christmas broadcast.
- Britain’s service industry is collapsing at a “harrowing” pace, according to data pointing to a recession steeper than that of the 1930s.
- Premier League clubs are to ask players to take a 30 per cent pay cut to protect jobs at football clubs.
- The deputy chief medical officer said there was no evidence that the public wearing face masks would slow the spread of the virus.
- Two nurses in their 30s died of coronavirus in the 24 hours up to last night (Friday).
Boris Johnson, who will continue to self-isolate with coronavirus symptoms including a temperature, used a video message to urge people to stick to the lockdown and not abandon social-distancing rules during what is expected to be a sunny weekend.
“Particularly if you’ve got kids in the household, everybody may be getting a bit stir-crazy, and there may be just a temptation to get out there, hang out and start to break the regulations. I just urge you not to do that,” the prime minister said, adding: “Please, please stick with the guidance now.”
Professor Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). He is chairman of SPI-M, the Sage committee overseeing mathematical models.
“This disease is so nasty that we had to suppress it completely,” he said. “Then we’ve kind of painted ourselves into a corner, because then the question will be what do we do now? We will have done three weeks of this lockdown so there’s a big decision coming up on April 13. In broad terms are we going to continue to harm children to protect vulnerable people, or not?”
It is understood that work is under way to quantify health harms caused by lockdown, although this has not yet reached ministers. They have said this trade-off has not featured in government decision-making and Downing Street is giving all its attention to social distancing and building NHS capacity.
While declining to comment on Sage discussions, Professor Medley said: “It’s certainly been a concern from the outset and something that is increasingly being considered.”
Nearly a million people have applied for benefits in the past two weeks and millions more have been furloughed.
Professor Medley said: “The measures to control [the disease] cause harm. The principal one is economic, and I don’t mean to the economy generally, I mean to the incomes of people who rely on a continuous stream of money and their children, particularly the school closure aspect . . . There will also be actual harms in terms of mental health in terms of domestic violence and child abuse and in terms of food poverty.”
He added: “If we carry on with lockdown it buys us more time, we can get more thought put into it, but it doesn’t resolve anything - it’s a placeholder.”
The introduction of the lockdown on March 23 is on course to avoid a catastrophic peak, but the virus will start spreading again once it is eased, it is believed. In the absence of a vaccine, viruses only stop spreading when enough people have been infected that they can no longer pass from person to person, a concept known as herd immunity.
Although never a government goal, this was tacitly accepted as inevitable by an initial strategy designed to manage a peak in the summer, when the NHS would be better able to cope. Headlines suggesting that ministers wanted 60 per cent of people to get the disease to protect the economy led to the idea being sidelined. Latest estimates suggest that almost 70 per cent of the population need to contract the virus to ensure herd immunity.
