Nearly 100,000 catching Covid every day as second wave turns ‘critical’

Scientists warn there needs to be a change before Christmas and claim current measures are ‘not sufficient’ (Picture: Reuters)

Medical experts say the second wave of coronavirus has reached a ‘critical stage’, with infections doubling about every nine days. Scientists warn there needs to be a change before Christmas and claim current measures are ‘not sufficient’. They estimate there are nearly 100,000 new infections each day in England, meaning the pandemic is still ‘growing exponentially’. Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London, said: ‘Our data show that there’s absolutely no reason to expect that exponential rise to change to the next few weeks, regardless of what we do, because we’re measuring infections occurring in the community.’

Visit our live blog for the latest updates Coronavirus news live He said it was not up to him to say what further measures may be introduced, but added: ‘If we are going to consider at some point over the winter that we may have to do something much more stringent, then it becomes a question of time. ‘I think these results do argue for something sooner rather than later.’ He added: ‘There has to be a change. The rate of growth that we’re seeing and in these data is really quite rapid, so one way or another there has to be a change before Christmas. ‘We’ve fairly reliably measured a slight decrease in R in our interim round five, now we have measured a slight increase in R, and the slight increase in R means that current measures are not sufficient.’

There are reportedly nearly 100,000 new infections each day in England, meaning the pandemic
is still ‘growing exponentially’ (Picture: Getty Images)

‘It’s more critical, because it’s gone up more and it’s continuing to go up. ‘And also we’re seeing this increase in the rate of rise, rather than decrease in the rate of rise which we did spot before. ‘So there was a period when the rate of rise was decreasing, and we were hopeful that the policies that have been implemented were turning the rates down and ultimately turning the prevalence down. ‘But what we see this time is an increase in the rate of rise and not only a high prevalence in the north, increasing rapidly increasing prevalence in the south.’ Scientists are also detecting early signs areas which previously had low rates of infection are following trends seen in the country’s worst-affected regions. The report suggests interim estimates of R were above 2.0 in the South East, East of England, London and South West, but there is a greater degree of uncertainty around these figures.

Scientists are also detecting early signs areas which previously had low rates of infection are starting
to see an increased number of cases (Picture: Circle Creative Studio)

 

 

 

The experts warn: ‘The co-occurrence of high prevalence and rapid growth means that the second wave of the epidemic in England has now reached a critical stage. ‘Whether via regional or national measures, it is now time-critical to control the virus and turn R below one if further hospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19 are to be avoided.’ They add that the pandemic is growing exponentially, but also say the effect of some of the most recent measures may not have filtered through to the numbers. The experts found the prevalence of infection was highest in Yorkshire and The Humber at 2.72%, up from 0.84%. In the North West it was at 2.27%, up from 1.21%, and lowest in the East of England at 0.55%, up from 0.29%.

 

Source:metro.co.uk/