By Ben Kerrigan
The UK must keep a significant level of social distancing until a vaccine for coronavirus is found, a scientist advising the government has said.
Prof Neil Ferguson, an adviser to Downing Street told BBC Radio 4 there was “little leeway” to relax measures without something.. in their place such as testing and contact-tracing. There is no clear indication of when a reliable vaccine will be ready, but earlier indications have been that a reliable one is between 12-18 months away. The race for a vaccine is well under way, with medical professionals in many parts of the world working round the clock to find one.
The comment comes in the wake of expectations for an announcement for a three-week extension to the lockdown. The British government’s position has been to maintain the lockdown until the scientific advice suggests otherwise. Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer has said he would support an extension, but called for details on how and when the lockdown will end. Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to review lockdown restrictions after three weeks, when he first set the restrictions on March 23.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Prof Ferguson, of Imperial College London cast doubt that a lockdown will be eased after a further 3 weeks. He said easing the lockdown after another three weeks would depend on “how quickly case numbers go down”.
He stressed the importance of “scaling up testing and putting in place the ability to track down cases in the community and contact-trace”. Prof Ferguson added: “Without that, our estimates show we have relatively little leeway; if we relax measures too much then we’ll see a resurgence of transmission.
“What we really need is the ability to put something in their place. If we want to open schools, let people get back to work, then we need to keep transmission down in another manner.
“And I should say, it’s not going to be going back to normal. We will have to maintain some level of social distancing, a significant level of social distancing, probably indefinitely until we have a vaccine”, he said.
The suggestion will comes a blow to those eager to return to normal life and could shatter the economy almost irreversibly if such indefinite social distancing is eventually imposed. A more likely scenario is that provided by the World Health Organisation, for social distancing and lockdown rules to be varied according to the scientific evidence to prevent a second wave from taking hold on the country
imperial.ac.uk