The British government needs to introduce stricter coronavirus locking rules to prevent a new wave of deaths from a new strain of the disease, a leading epidemiologist and government adviser warned Tuesday.
Britain reported 41,385 new COVID cases on Monday, the highest number since tests became widely available in mid-2020, and English hospitals say they have more COVID patients than at the first wave of the pandemic in April.
“We are entering a dangerous new phase of pandemic, and we are going to need early national action to prevent a catastrophe in January and February,” said Andrew Hayward, senior. professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London.
More than 71,000 people in Britain have died within 28 days of a positive diagnosis of the disease.
Hayward, who sits on the British government’s advisory group on respiratory diseases, said the new strain of COVID made it easier for infected people to mean that lock-in measures in England are unlikely to be slows the spread of the disease.
On 26 December the British government extended the strictest level of COVID restrictions, under which non-essential vendors are closed and people are usually unable to meet in person, to cover nearly half of England’s population.
Hayward told the BBC that these loops needed to be extended further.
“We’re really looking at a situation where we’re moving in close to a lockout,” he said.
Schools in England are set to reopen to large numbers of pupils on January 4th. Hayward said it would be from a truly epidemiological point of view that it would make sense to keep them closed longer, but poor pupils who were opposed to online learning had problems with loopholes in other areas of public life. it would be better.
Authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own policies on schools and measures to combat COVID.