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The Spanish government have announced that they are starting to ease some of their lockdown measures.
Prof Keith Neal, Emeritus Professor in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham, said:
“Those countries that had coronavirus spread before the UK are now considering reducing their social distancing measures. Learning from different countries is not straightforward as this is a series of different epidemics within countries and also differences within the country. (Compare London and rural areas in the UK, New York City and other parts of the USA). Some measures like reopening schools are more likely to be transferable across European countries.
“There will be about half a dozen countries that we can learn from. Currently the main policy aim is that the NHS can cope with the influx of acutely ill COVID-19 and other seriously ill patients. The other health issues we will need to address are cancer treatments. Weighing up other health issues is largely determined by how long it is reasonable to delay treatment.
“I suspect in the UK we won’t reduce the measures until the number of new hospital admissions are falling and that the NHS has capacity for a rebound in the number of cases. By then we will have more ventilators, more PPE, more testing of acutely ill people and possibly the mobile contact tracing app. It is better to delay the lifting of restrictions by one week than lifting one week too early.”
*www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52267376
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