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Coronavirus: Relaxing lockdown 'risky' and 'political decision'
May 29, 2020
Relaxing lockdown is a risk because levels of the coronavirus are still at "very high" levels, one of the government's top science advisers says.
Prof John Edmunds said it was a "political decision" to lift lockdown and that "many" scientists would wait.
The warning comes as Sage, the scientists advising government, publish details of their confidential meetings.
A meeting on April 23 estimated there would be only 1,000 cases per day by mid-May.
Instead, estimates by the Office for National Statistics suggest there are currently 8,000 cases per day in England alone. Those figures don't including cases in care homes or hospitals.
'Little time for stringent measures'
"Many of us would prefer to see the incidence down to lower levels before we relax measures," Prof Edmunds, from the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine, said.
Newly-published Sage documents also warned of the dangers of having high numbers of cases.
They say this would "give little time to re-impose more stringent measures" if the infection rate (the R-number) started to increase.
Disease modellers feeding into Sage discussions said having high levels of the virus could allow restrictions to be eased as more people would develop immunity to the virus.
But that would "result in tens of thousands of direct deaths" and could not be achieved by autumn without intensive care units being overwhelmed.
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