Sobering study on Covid-19 has UK ramping up controls

London — A piece of research that helped convince the British government to impose more stringent measures to contain Covid-19 painted a worst-case picture of hundreds of thousands of deaths and a health service overwhelmed with severely sick patients.

In a sharp toughening of Britain’s approach to the outbreak on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson closed down social life in the world’s fifth largest economy and advised those older than 70 with underlying health problems to isolate.

The projection study, by a team led by Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, used new data gathered from Italy where the infectious disease epidemic has surged in recent weeks.

Comparing the potential impact of the Covid-19 epidemic with the devastating flu outbreak of 1918, Ferguson’s team said that with no mitigating measures at all, the outbreak could cause more than half a million deaths in Britain and 2.2-million in the US.

Even with the government’s previous plan to control the outbreak — which involved home isolation of suspected cases but did not include restrictions on wider society — could result in 250,000 people dying “and health systems ... being overwhelmed many times over”, the study said.

With the measures outlined — including extreme social distancing and advice to avoid clubs, pubs and theatres — the epidemic’s curve and peak could be flattened, the scientists said.

“This is going to place huge pressure on us as a society, and economically,” said Azra Ghani, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial who co-led the work with Ferguson.

The study helped change the British government’s position, according to those involved with the decision. The government said it has accelerated its plans at “the advice of the experts” and that the new measures have always been “part of the government’s action plan”.

“We continue to follow the science and act on the advice of the experts, which is that we are bringing in these more substantial measures slightly faster than we originally planned,” the source said.

Tim Colbourn, an expert in global health epidemiology at University College London said the projections in the study signaled “tough times ahead ... The results are sobering.” 

Reuters