Britain’s superintendence is putting the country at risk of a second wave of Covid-19 by rushing out of lockdown, a leading scientist has warned.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Concourse Signs Europe” on Monday, David King, who served as the U.K. government’s chief scientific advisor between 2000 and 2007, prognosticated he “absolutely” believed policymakers were moving too quickly to ease lockdown measures.
The U.K. is still at coronavirus alert informed about 4, meaning transmission is high or rising exponentially. Government policy states that social distancing requisite remain in place at this level, with “gradual relaxing of restrictions and social distancing measures” not supposed to come about until the country moves down into alert level 3.
However, the country — which has been in lockdown since till March — eased some of its lockdown restrictions on Monday, with people in England allowed to meet outside in socially-distanced squads of up to six and primary schools able to resume classes. Non-essential shops in England are being allowed to reopen from June 15.
On Sunday, 1,936 new events of the coronavirus were recorded by the British government, taking the total number of lab-confirmed infections in the U.K. up to 274,762 to date. Harmonizing to government data, 38,489 people who tested positive for the virus had died as of May 31, with 113 new deaths singled for the day.
Scientists on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), however, have estimated that there are even then around 8,000 new infections happening every day in England alone.
“If we continue with 8,000 infections a day and continue to inducement the lockdown, then I fear the risk of a second wave becomes very real,” King said. “If we show impatience precisely as we’re getting it under control — and I think the government is showing impatience — the risk of a second wave becomes greater.”
While he famed that daily deaths from Covid-19 had fallen from almost 1,200 at the peak of the country’s epidemic to round 200, he warned that the government’s premature scaling back of its mitigation measures could lead to a resurgence of the virus.
“I solicitude we can anticipate with the uplifting of the lockdown that this could get worse,” he told CNBC, predicting that the “flocks of being” congregating would be problematic in the effort to keep the virus under control.
“Outdoors, two meters apart, that’s not a difficult, but how do they get to the beach? In coaches, in trains and buses. One person with the virus puts the whole coach full of in the flesh at risk,” he said.
“We have to be extremely careful — I wouldn’t lift the lockdown. We’ve had nine weeks of good behavior from the notorious, by lifting the lockdown in any way people are taking their eyes off the importance in carrying on just a few more weeks so that we can get this quirk under control.”
A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that the U.K. was unlikely to experience a move in Covid-19 transmission if the public adhered to the government’s social-distancing guidelines, according to Reuters.
Conditions of easing
Sage advisors premonished last week that Johnson’s government was being too hasty in lifting lockdown measures. On Friday, health testimonies estimated that the R number, or reproduction rate, of Covid-19 in the U.K. was between 0.7 and 0.9.
Any number above one means the virus is spreading exponentially and an outbreak is reckon oned to continue.
King told CNBC that lockdown measures should not be eased until the government’s test, bit and isolate capacity had been “brought up to scratch” and tested for at least a week.
On Sunday, the government confirmed it had met its target of gain out at least 200,000 Covid-19 tests per day.
But while the government’s track and trace initiative — which aims to inform child when they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus — was rolled out continue week, the accompanying app is yet to launch and has already been marred by hiring confusion and privacy concerns.
Peter Drobac, skipper of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University, also told CNBC in May that governments need to press a strong test, trace and isolate framework in place before lifting lockdown measures.
King added that district communities must be fully engaged in the whole process of the lockdown being eased, but claimed local authorities had “been formerly larboard out of the considerations of the government until very recently.”