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 Scientifc 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 Organisation 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.
The professor said that the R number would be between 3 and 4 without any containment measures, which means that every infected person would pass the virus on to three or four others.
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.
The UK government, based on prior scientific advice and faced with a record-high budget deficit, has started a gradual loosening of social distancing restrictions. Some businesses and schools in England will be allowed to reopen from Monday, 1 June, and all non-essential retailers will be able to open from 15 June.
The easing of the lockdown appeared to go against the government's own rules, according to which it should only take place when the coronavirus alert level is lowered to 3. It currently remains at 4.
Edmunds conceded that it was up for ministers to decide what to do, because the impact on public health had to be set against the broader impact of the lockdown on economy and society. “That’s clearly a political decision. It’s not a scientific decision,” he added.
Jeremy Farrar, who also sits on the SAGE, tweeted following the briefing that the virus is spreading "too fast to lift lockdown in England".
He wrote that the newly-introduced test and trace system has to be "fully working" and rapid testing should be in place before any measures are introduced.
A third member of the SAGE, Professor Peter Horby, has also warned that the situation is not under control yet.
"We really can't go back to a situation where we've got the numbers of cases and deaths we've had in the past," he told BBC Radio. "As we know, [the test and trace system] needed to be in place not yet fully operational so that is where the risk lies."
