March 7, 2020

expert reaction to another rise in UK cases of COVID-19

The Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC’s) number of confirmed cases published on Saturday 7th March show that there are now 203 cases of COVID-19 in the UK, a rise of 43 from the previous day.

Dr Tom Wingfield, Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Physician, Departments of Clinical Sciences and International Public Health, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said:

“Over the past week we moved to the delay phase of the COVID19 outbreak in the UK and our approach has shifted towards slowing down transmission of the virus. The numbers of cases that we have seen over the past week show that this was an appropriate and proportionate response by the government. While the majority of cases in the UK are still in people who have had travel to high risk areas outside of the UK or known contact with someone confirmed to have COVID19, we are likely to see an increase in the proportion of cases without any relevant travel or clear contact history over the coming weeks.

“The evidence from multiple countries suggests that the great majority of people with COVID19 have only mild symptoms and will soon get back to full health. Indeed, in the UK, some people with mild symptoms are self-isolating and being managed at home. It is important that those at highest risk of more severe symptoms and illness, such as people aged over 60 or those with diabetes, chronic heart or lung conditions, or impaired immune systems, are especially vigilant.

“We can all continue to look after ourselves and each other by washing our hands thoroughly and regularly with soap and water or alcohol gel, “catching, killing, and binning” our coughs and sneezes, self-isolation where appropriate, and keeping up to date with the latest guidance.”

Prof Sheila Bird, Formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:

“Since UK’s cumulative number of positive cases is currently doubling roughly every 2 days, it will be soon be highly informative to offer additional reporting – but a week in arrears –  by sample-date and by the reason-for-testing [surveillance-by-design, contact-tracing, other reason(s)]. We may also anticipate that the age-distributions of UK’s  first 200 COVID-19 cases may be different from the age-distribution for the second, third and fourth set of 200 cases as their source of infection shifts from mainly outside UK to be increasingly within-UK. How the age-distribution shifts per 200 diagnosed-cases of COVID-19, if it does,  will be insightful about UK-based transmission.”

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.