June 2, 2021

expert comment on current COVID-19 situation and whether we are entering a third wave

Comments from Dr Stephen Griffin and Professor Jonathan Ball on the current COVID-19 situation in case useful.

Dr Stephen Griffin, Associate Professor, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, said:

“I would be very worried about going ahead with plans to unlock in June. The government has said that it intends the roadmap to be a one way process, and for this reason we are supposed to follow data, not dates, and four tests serve as safeguards to ensure progress is cautious enough not to require backwards steps. The 4th of these tests is that a new variant ought not to provide cause for concern that would change the strategy. It is abundantly clear that this test has not been met at present.

“The variant first detected in India entered the UK due to a porous, ineffectual border policy, and the same policy now means we are at risk of exporting it. Cases continue to rise exponentially and it seems spread has not been curtailed within certain hotspots. Also, hospitalisations are rising, with a similar lag time to what we’ve seen too many times before. Whilst vaccines have proven highly effective in protecting groups that have received both doses, it is the case that a significant proportion of adults along with children remain susceptible. Whilst we might expect this part of the population to be more resilient, if enough of the younger population become infected there will be some individuals who end up with serious COVID or with long COVID, plus not all vulnerable people have had a vaccine yet. The now dominant variant is highly transmissible, and has the potential to cause enough cases such that hospitalisation again puts tremendous pressure on the NHS.

“I would urge the government to at the very least pause, but ideally review present restrictions in order to put things on line with the vaccination schedule, as was done in Israel. At the very least I would wait until the schools break for summer, and in no way would I recommend that masks, distancing and numbers be changed for indoor mixing. We are facing a critical test, we mustn’t make the same mistakes as 2020. The vaccines are the solution for richer countries like the UK, but we mustn’t let impatience cause unnecessary harm along that road.”

Comment sent out 01/06/2021:

Prof Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology, University of Nottingham, said:

“There’s a sizeable proportion of our population who aren’t fully vaccinated, and many of these people will be susceptible to infection.  Therefore, as we lift restrictions we may well see a continued rise in infections until vaccine roll-out has  reached these people.

“But a rise in infections is not in itself bad news.  Provided the vaccines continue to protect the vast majority of vulnerable people, cases of severe disease and death should be kept low.  That’s the key indicator here, which is why we need to keep a close eye on it.”

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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