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Covid cases could reach 200,000 per day in the UK this year and cause ‘major disruption’ for the NHS, according to the scientist whose initial modeling helped shape Britain’s coronavirus lockdown strategy.
Professor Neil Ferguson said it was “almost inevitable” that Monday’s final unlocking phase would result in 100,000 daily cases, with around 1,000 hospitalizations – although around half of the UK is fully vaccinated. He added that he could foresee a situation where the case rate would increase up to twice as much.
“The real question is whether we can double that – or even more,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. “And that’s where the crystal ball starts to fail. I mean, you could end up with 2,000 hospitalizations a day, 200,000 cases a day – but that’s a lot less certain.
Daily hospitalizations exceeding 2,000 per day are equivalent to the level of the week before Christmas. While those currently hospitalized do not get as seriously ill and are much less likely to die, Ferguson said that “if you have enough cases you can still have a pretty big burden on the health care system … a major disruption of health care. services and cancellation of elective internships. surgery and the NHS backlog is growing. “
Coronavirus infections in the UK are on the rise again and hospitalizations are on the rise, driven by the spread of the Delta variant and the partial lifting of restrictions. Almost all restrictions are expected to be removed in England on Monday, including mask-wearing and social distancing warrants. Whether this unlock is permanent or temporary will depend on precautions taken by the public and vaccination rates, scientists have warned, adding that there would likely be an increase in cases regardless of when the remaining restrictions are lifted.
Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London found there had been an almost triple underestimation of the true magnitude of the level of infection in the country in March of last year – forcing the government to impose a full lockdown on March 23. The colossal upheaval in the British way of life is therefore directly attributable to the modeling carried out over a few days, calculations which would lead to Ferguson being considered by part of the British press and public as the figurehead of the confinement.
Some scientists vehemently opposed lifting the remaining restrictions on July 19, suggesting that the government has decided to achieve “herd immunity” by effectively letting the virus run wild among young people, which they say will lead to harms. disruptions in NHS care and education. This strategy would also lead to more people suffering from long-term Covid and increase the risk of new vaccine-resistant variants. Instead, they’re advising more people to get fully immunized before fully unlocking.
Although vaccination weakened the link between infections and hospitalizations and deaths, it did not break it. With a high rate of infections, even a small percentage of people hospitalized and / or dying will still be large numbers, the scientists pointed out. Sage advisers expect 1,000 to 2,000 daily hospitalizations over the summer after unlocking, and 100 to 200 deaths a day, depending on what has been described as the “central scenario.”
The UK has one of the highest daily new case per million rates in the world, according to the Our World in Data project led by the Global Change Data Lab, a UK-based nonprofit, behind only Indonesia and Brazil in the past seven years. daily average of new daily cases of Covid.
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