April 8, 2020

expert reaction to latest figures on COVID-19 cases and deaths in the UK

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have announced the latest figures for cases (60,733) of and deaths (7,097) from COVID-19 in the UK.

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

“We should reflect on the misery that these numbers will have brought to families across the UK and think of them at this dreadful time. Social distancing is beginning to work as expected, however, it will be some time before this feeds through into a sustained reduction in the reduction in the number of new deaths being reported. The deaths we are seeing are of people infected before the lock down. Everyone of us can lower the death toll in the future by following government advice and thus preventing more infections. For those who are already infected over 90 % will avoid a very serious illness. For the small portion of those already infected who will develop the most serious disease, it is the extraordinary efforts of our health care professionals and continuing scientific advances in treatment that will make a difference.”

Dr Tom Wingfield, Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Physician, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), said:

“The increases in the UK’s capacity to deliver care to people needing CPAP and intensive care support are encouraging. Unfortunately, as we have seen in other countries in Europe, the number of deaths from Covid-19 will likely increase further in the coming days before we start to see the impact of social distancing and, hopefully, the peak of the epidemic.

“This is due to the lag period from coronavirus exposure to Covid-19 symptoms to illness to requirement of ICU and, in a minority of cases, death; a process which could take 3 weeks or more. In addition, many parts of the country have not yet reached ICU capacity and so the impact of expansion in beds will not yet be felt.

“Let us hope that, through our collective actions, we will soon pass the peak in Covid-19 cases and deaths and start to see the encouraging declines that other affected countries in Europe are now beginning to experience.”

Prof Rowland Kao, Sir Timothy O’Shea Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science, University of Edinburgh, said:

“The number of deaths, while re-emphasizing the scale of the problem we are facing, importantly they do not contradict the official view that there are signs of the epidemic in England tailing off. Many of the deaths occurring now are due to cases of infection that occurred before the lockdowns were in place. With some delays in reporting as well, we have not seen the full effects of the lockdown yet. Importantly, this also means that stresses on the NHS and in particular on intensive care facilities will only continue to increase for now.”

Prof Jon Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Infectious Diseases, Brighton & Sussex Medical School, said:

 “It is obviously terribly disappointing to see another jump in the number of patients who have sadly died from this infection, even though in truth it reflects what one would expect from the predicted trajectory of the epidemic. The main concern though is the risk that it will be perceived by the public as a ‘failure’ of the social distancing regime, and in particular with the holiday weekend approaching, as a reason to pay less attention to the government advice. Government health advisors will want to emphasise that there will always be a lag between the numbers of new cases falling and the number of deaths reducing; maintaining the social distancing at this time remains paramount.”

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public

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

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