UK Government Advisers Warn Lifting Restrictions is Too Risky as Thousands Get Infected Every Day

By Staff, Agencies

The UK government started winding down social distancing rules across the country. England was the first to announce an exit strategy, but government advisers say that the rate of new coronavirus cases is still too high and may lead to more deaths.

Three scientists who advise the UK government on its coronavirus response have warned that it is too risky to reopen England yet as thousands of people continue to get infected by the day.

John Edmunds, a professor of infectious disease modelling who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies [SAGE], issued the warning during Friday's Q&A session for reporters.

“We cannot relax our guard by very much at all,” he said.

According to a recent survey by the Office of National Statistics, there are 54,000 new coronavirus infections every week in England alone, or around 8,000 a day. The World Health Organization estimates that the rate of new cases - the so-called incidence rate - in the whole of the UK is the fifth-highest in the world.

“Many of us would prefer to see the incidence driven down to lower levels so we have fewer cases occurring before we then relax the measures,” said Edmunds. “With relatively high incidence, relaxing the measures with an untested ‘track and trace’, I think we are taking some risk here.”

He added that “even if that risk doesn’t play out and we manage to keep incidence flat, we’re keeping it flat at quite a high level".

The reproductive rate of the coronavirus in England is between 0.7 and 0.9, Edmunds said. An R value of 1 means that every person who is infected will infect one other person, on average. If R is below 1 it means the epidemic is shrinking, and if it is greater than 1 the epidemic is growing.

An easing of restrictions is likely to allow that rate to grow above 1, and the number of new cases will remain the same, he warned. That would lead to the daily death toll in England to continue to stay between 40 and 80 even without a second wave of the pandemic.