Andrew Hayward, professor of infectious illness epidemiology at University College London (UCL) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), informed Times Radio that opening colleges, then reopening retailers and stress-free social guidelines are “very huge steps” and “we do not actually perceive what affect they are going to have on transmission”.
Speaking in a private capability, he mentioned there are “very sizeable numbers of individuals” who’re “susceptible to ending up in hospital and dying”.
He added: “And that is nonetheless going to be the case for some time. Although the vaccines clearly take the excessive out of that, and can cease us getting a whole lot of 1000’s of instances, there’s nonetheless potentialities for us to get tens of 1000’s of hospitalisations and really many deaths if we loosen up too rapidly.”
He mentioned he agrees that there wants to be a five-week interval between steps and it is “proper to take this cautious method”, including: “It’s taken a very long time for us to study to be cautious on this respect; I do not assume it’s time to return to a extra dangerous method.”
Asked a couple of surge of infections in the winter, he mentioned: “What the vaccine ought to do is take out the chance of that surge main to, say, over 100,000 deaths. I believe that is unlikely… we’re going to be more likely to be speaking in the tens of 1000’s of deaths and hopefully in the low tens of 1000’s of deaths.
“That sounds horrible however truly that is not so dissimilar to what we put up with yearly for flu and other respiratory infections.”
