Experts urge ministers not to overreact to rising coronavirus cases

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Ministers don’t need to panic yet about rising coronavirus cases in Britain, a leading expert insisted today after it was revealed that Boris Johnson fears a second wave could start within a fortnight.

A senior government source told the Mail the Prime Minister was ‘extremely concerned’ by outbreaks ‘bubbling up’, both at home and across Europe.

But Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease specialist at the University of East Anglia, moved to reassure the nation today and said: ‘Give us a couple of weeks before we start panicking.’

He told MailOnline cases in the UK are drifting up but are not going up quickly and said it was possible ‘we could last out August’ without any new lockdown-like measures to control an outbreak. 

The lockdown, imposed on March 23, has crippled the economy and triggered thousands of job losses amid fears the UK is on track for the worst recession in 300 years. 

Although the number of UK cases is relatively low, rises were recorded each day last week for the first time since the April peak. The seven-day average stands at almost 700 – 28 per cent up on three weeks ago.

Ministers have been warning of a potential second wave of the pandemic this winter but now fear it could come sooner. On a visit to Nottingham yesterday, Mr Johnson said Britons must not drop their guard.

He added: ‘The most important thing is for everybody in all communities to heed the advice, to follow the advice, not to be spreading it accidentally and get it right down and we’ll be able to ease the restrictions across the country.

‘But clearly we now face, I’m afraid, the threat of a second wave in other parts of Europe and we just have to be vigilant.’

It comes as ministers today signed a deal with pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur for 60million doses of a fourth experimental Covid-19 vaccine — even though it has yet to be trialled on humans.

In other developments today:

• Ministers warned there is ‘no silver bullet’ to save summer holidays abroad amid claims Belgium, Luxembourg and Croatia could soon be added to the UK’s travel quarantine list;
• Care homes were ‘thrown to the wolves’ during the pandemic and the government’s actions were ‘at times negligent’, MPs claimed in a scathing report;
• The cost of Number 10’s furlough scheme passed £30billion this week — but will not stop unemployment rising above ten per cent, a leading thinktank warned;
• Oldham has become the latest place to introduce tighter coronavirus restrictions after overtaking Leicester to be the second worst-hit area of England with an almost 200 per cent surge in cases over the past week.

Mr Johnson is said to have been spooked by the resurgence of the virus in parts of the US and Europe following the easing of lockdown. 

Cases in Spain doubled last week while the Belgian government warned of a second ‘complete lockdown’ unless outbreaks come under control.

The head of Germany’s public health agency yesterday said he was ‘very concerned’ by rising infection levels.

A Downing Street source said: ‘The PM is extremely concerned by what he’s seeing abroad and fears we could be seeing the same thing here in a fortnight.

‘People have got to realise we are still in the middle of a pandemic. He wants to go further on opening things up and getting people back to work, but he knows it’ll be his head on the block if things go wrong.’  

It comes after a World Health Organization official last night said any spikes in cases are not signs of a second wave and revealed the pandemic is just unfolding into ‘one big wave’. 

Margaret Harris, of the UN agency, said: ‘The best thing is to flatten it and turn it into just something lapping at your feet.’

Professor Linda Bauld, a public health expert at the University of Edinburgh, told The Guardian: ‘Second wave isn’t a term that we would use [in epidemiology] at the current time, as the virus hasn’t gone away.

‘It’s in our population, it has spread to 188 countries so far, and what we are seeing now is essentially localised spikes or a localised return of a large number of cases.’

Discussing the resurgence of the virus in the UK, Professor Hunter told MailOnline: ‘I don’t care what you want to call it, there’s no real proper definition that is universally accepted of what is and what isn’t a second wave.

‘But the reality is case numbers are increasing across multiple European countries again. One of the big things we’re seeing at the minute is that, when you look at the UK, most areas are still free of infection. 

‘And most of the increase is in a relatively small proportion of areas within the UK. That seems to be the case within Spain, and probably other countries.’

When asked how to deal with any up-tick in infections, he added: ‘You can be really, really good at spotting local increases and apply local lockdowns, or you can reimpose national restrictions that we’ve recently relaxed. 

‘At the moment, although it’s drifting up, it’s not going up that quickly [so] maybe we could last out August — but then really hard decisions need to be taken in September or October. 

‘If it increases like it has in Spain, then hard decisions will need to be taken very soon.’ He added he was hopeful, but not confident, that the current whack-a-mole style strategy of fighting local flare-ups is sufficient.

Whitehall sources yesterday confirmed that Mr Johnson’s caution showed itself in the controversial decision to extend the travel ban on Spain to the country’s Balearic and Canary islands, where case numbers are lower.

The decision has sparked a diplomatic clash with Spain, with the nation’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez describing the restrictions on travel to the country as an ‘error’ and saying tourists in most regions would be safer than they are in the UK.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab are both said to have opposed the move to extend the travel ban to the Spanish islands, only to be overruled by the Prime Minister on Monday.

Ministers decided to reimpose quarantine restrictions on Spain after it emerged 10 Britons had returned from the country with coronavirus and Professor Chris Whitty said ‘doing nothing isn’t an option’, it was revealed yesterday.

It comes as ministers today warned there is ‘no silver bullet’ to save summer holidays abroad amid claims that Belgium and Luxembourg could soon be added to the UK’s travel quarantine list.  

Meanwhile, ministers are said to be closely monitoring the situation in Croatia but a crackdown on that country is not expected to be imminent, according to The Times. 

A Whitehall source said: ‘The PM was determined to make sure we have a clear and consistent message on Spain, regardless of the situation in individual regions.

‘That’s fair enough, but you can see why Spain is upset because it treats the whole country as if it was as bad as the worst region.’

The government source — who wasn’t named — added: ‘If other countries did that to us they would be judging the whole country on the situation in Leicester.’

Figures released yesterday showed the rolling seven-day average of cases has continued to rise throughout the month, from 546 cases on July 5 to 697 on July 25 – an increase of 28 per cent.

Downing Street last night acknowledged that the PM was concerned about the situation abroad but played down the idea there was an imminent risk of an upsurge in the UK.

There are no immediate plans to reimpose restrictions on a nationwide basis. A No 10 source said: ‘We have not seen a sharp uptick yet, but we are concerned. 

‘We don’t want to experience what some other countries are experiencing and it would be remiss of us if we were not looking at steps to prevent that.

‘That means we need to make sure we are not importing cases from abroad. But it also means people need to be vigilant here and maintain the social distancing. 

‘The virus has not migrated for the summer and we have always said we will put the handbrake back on if we need to.’

Professor Whitty is thought to be concerned about the risk of the virus being ‘seeded’ by holidaymakers returning from abroad, particularly as many people who get the virus display no symptoms.

He is also monitoring a dozen or so boroughs which have been placed on a ‘watch-list’ due to high or fast-rising infection rates, including Peterborough, Northampton, Luton, Leicester, Rochdale and Bradford. 

Oldham has become the latest place to introduce tighter coronavirus restrictions after overtaking Leicester to be the second worst-hit area of England with an almost 200 per cent surge in cases over the past week.

Official NHS statistics show 128 people were diagnosed with Covid-19 in the Greater Manchester town in the seven days up to July 26. This equates to a rate of 54.3 cases per 100,000 people.

In comparison, the rate in Leicester — which remains the only place in the UK to have been hit by a local lockdown — is 53.2. Blackburn with Darwen is the current hotspot, with a rate of 85.9.

Oldham council bosses yesterday urged all of the borough’s 235,000 residents to not let any visitors into their home for at least two weeks, in a desperate bid to ‘prevent a strict local lockdown being put in place’.

It puts Oldham at odds with the rest of England, after lockdown rules were finally relaxed earlier this month to let people to stay overnight with loved ones, after months of not being allowed in other homes.

Everyone living in the Greater Manchester borough has also been asked to keep two metres apart from friends and family when seeing them outside. Current government advice for the rest of the nation recommends a one metre-plus rule — but people should keep two metres apart where possible. 

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