July 16, 2021

expert reaction to 51,870 cases reported today on the government dashboard

A comment from Professor James Naismith and Dr Jonathan Stoye on the latest figures on the DHSC COVID-19 Dashboard.

Dr Jonathan Stoye, Group Leader, Retrovirus-Host Interactions Laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, said:

“The increasing numbers on the daily dashboard stats are a grave cause for concern.  It is my belief that mask-wearing and strict observation of social distancing measures represent the best way forward.”

Prof James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, and University of Oxford, said:

“With nearly 52,000 cases we are less than one doubling away from 100,000.  We have not plateaued at 33,000, in fact we are heading into the unlocking with a large and rapidly growing wave of cases.

“We can expect pressure on hospitals to grow and become apparent by early August.

“I don’t imagine track and trace will function for much longer.  Neither it or the app were designed for 100,000 cases in a highly vaccinated population.”

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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