By Ben Kerrigan
Documents released by The Scientific Advisory Group For Emergencies (Sage) suggests that Covid is spreading much faster through England than the government’s predicted “worst-case” scenario, documents reveal.
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says there are around four times as many people catching Covid than anticipated.
The group have estimated 85,000 deaths from Covid over the course of winter, but the estimated figures are no more than a conjecture. Professor Neil Ferguson had predicted 50,000 deaths by October, but so far there have been only 26,000 registered deaths arising from COVID-19
Sage wants the Uk to follow Germany and France into a full national shutdown ‘for at least a month’ because they say the current three-tiered lockdown system is failing. But top experts say interventions take at least three weeks to take effect.
SAGE sent a stark warning to Boris Johnson today that deaths were on already on track to exceed the 85,000 they projected in their ‘worst case scenario’ modelling over summer – which estimated there would be 100 Covid-19 fatalities a day by the end of October. Britain is already recording three times that amount.
Scientists crunching the numbers estimated that, by mid-October, there were between 43,000 and 74,000 people being infected with coronavirus every day in England.
Their report said: “This is significantly above the profile of the reasonable worst-case scenario, where the number of daily infections in England remained between 12,000-13,000 throughout October.”
However, conflicting data from the Office Of National Statistics contradict those predictions. The ONS stats reveal daily coronavirus infections in England surged by 50 per cent last week. It estimated almost 52,000 people were catching the virus every day and one in every 100 people in the country were infected with Covid-19 a week ago.
The weekly update is also lower than a Government-funded study, REACT-1, and Kings College London. This week, REACT-1 claimed there were 96,000 new cases per day by October 25, putting the current outbreak on the same level with that of the first wave. Also, researchers at King’s College London have predicted England has around 32,000 cases per day and claimed infections are rising ‘steadily’ and ‘have not spiralled out of control’.
The government scientist’s wild predictions are therefore unreliable and should not be used to make any wild decisions.