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- Oct 17, 2012
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Cabinet pressure on PM to name dates as 20,000 new virus cases are estimated every day
Boris Johnson will keep Britain in lockdown until next month at the earliest after he was warned that outbreaks in care homes and hospitals make significant easing any sooner too dangerous.
He is being urged by cabinet ministers to give specific dates by which elements of the lockdown can be lifted to avert a collapse of consumer and business confidence. The prime minister told the cabinet that he would proceed with “maximum caution”, with only modest and incremental changes to the restrictions before the end of this month.
“It is baby steps taken slowly and only when it’s clear they can be taken,” said an ally familiar with the plans, which will be finalised today and tomorrow and outlined at 7pm on Sunday.
The only certain immediate easing will be that people can take unlimited outdoor exercise from Monday. Churches and other places of worship are also likely to be allowed to open for private prayer and garden centres could be permitted to reopen.
Allowing people from more than one household to mix has slipped down the order of priorities because policymakers say more work is needed before they can proceed. “How do you enforce it?” a government source asked. “It could easily lead to a spike in transmission if it goes wrong.”
Ministers are already being warned that the true rate of new daily cases could be 20,000, far higher than previously acknowledged. Experts also said that the R number, the speed at which the epidemic spreads, was just below the highly dangerous level of one.
It came as:
• The Bank of England said Britain was on course to suffer its worst recession for 300 years.
• Police warned people to maintain the lockdown during an expected warm and sunny bank holiday weekend.
• Those with suspected coronavirus were told it could take ten days for them to get results of government tests.
• Men are twice as likely as women to die in hospital from coronavirus, the biggest study yet showed.
• The trace and test app began trials on the Isle of Wight, with 30 per cent of residents downloading it.
The prime minister is under pressure from his political opponents and backbenchers to outline a way out of lockdown. One cabinet minister referred to those pushing for dates in the roadmap as the “datists”.
However, Mr Johnson will say on Sunday that progress through the “roadmap” is conditional on a low and shrinking pool of coronavirus infection.
Initial data from a sampling exercise by the Office for National Statistics suggests that that prevalence of the infection in the population is between 0.2 and 0.6 per cent, said a well-placed source. This translates to up to 400,000 people infected nationwide.
Yesterday Sir Ian Diamond, head of the ONS, acknowledged that there were at least three times as many new cases every day as recorded by official figures. He agreed with estimates that daily cases were running at about 20,000, while it is understood that cabinet has been told the figure is between 16,000 and 18,000.
Official data confirmed by positive tests show 5,614 cases yesterday. A much higher daily infection rate significantly complicates government plans to control the next stage of the epidemic. It makes the strategy of tracing the contacts of known cases and isolating them to stop the spread of infection much more difficult.
Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who sits on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), warned that the present level of cases made it “probably impossible” to control the pandemic through contact tracing. “The incidence has to come right down for contact tracing to be feasible,” he warned MPs on the science and technology committee. The Isle of Wight is trialling the trace and test app but the hope is that its use can be extended elsewhere.
Sir Ian agreed with Professor Edmunds’s assessment that the R number had risen and was just below one, the point at which cases grow again.
Sir Ian said: “R has probably gone up just a little bit from his last estimates — that is driven by the epidemic in care homes. It a real challenge to reduce the epidemic in care homes.”
Professor Edmunds said that outbreaks had not worsened in care homes but national measurements of R were “dominated by” infections there that had not been brought under control as they had in the wider population.
He insisted: “The lockdown has worked, breaking chains of transmission in the community. But what’s left is a series of outbreaks in care homes and hospitals up and down the country that are on-going.”
Scientific advisers fear that outbreaks in care homes could “re-seed” the pandemic in the rest of the country and have told the government that uncertainty about whether they are being brought under control means lockdown needs to be eased more gradually.
Dominic Raab, the first secretary of state, said getting a grip on the crisis of care homes was the government’s “top focus” over the next month as it looks at easing further restrictions.
While he insisted that deaths were falling, the admission is likely to intensify questions about whether too many hospital patients were discharged to care homes in a rush to free beds.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing, Mr Raab said: “Our top focus is on the hospital infections and on the care settings. We’ve got a very robust and rigorous plan to really drive down the infection rate in those two settings over the next month.”
The extent to which Mr Johnson sets out dates by which measures could be relaxed remains “a live issue”, senior figures conceded last night.
Boris Johnson will keep Britain in lockdown until next month at the earliest after he was warned that outbreaks in care homes and hospitals make significant easing any sooner too dangerous.
He is being urged by cabinet ministers to give specific dates by which elements of the lockdown can be lifted to avert a collapse of consumer and business confidence. The prime minister told the cabinet that he would proceed with “maximum caution”, with only modest and incremental changes to the restrictions before the end of this month.
“It is baby steps taken slowly and only when it’s clear they can be taken,” said an ally familiar with the plans, which will be finalised today and tomorrow and outlined at 7pm on Sunday.
The only certain immediate easing will be that people can take unlimited outdoor exercise from Monday. Churches and other places of worship are also likely to be allowed to open for private prayer and garden centres could be permitted to reopen.
Allowing people from more than one household to mix has slipped down the order of priorities because policymakers say more work is needed before they can proceed. “How do you enforce it?” a government source asked. “It could easily lead to a spike in transmission if it goes wrong.”
Ministers are already being warned that the true rate of new daily cases could be 20,000, far higher than previously acknowledged. Experts also said that the R number, the speed at which the epidemic spreads, was just below the highly dangerous level of one.
It came as:
• The Bank of England said Britain was on course to suffer its worst recession for 300 years.
• Police warned people to maintain the lockdown during an expected warm and sunny bank holiday weekend.
• Those with suspected coronavirus were told it could take ten days for them to get results of government tests.
• Men are twice as likely as women to die in hospital from coronavirus, the biggest study yet showed.
• The trace and test app began trials on the Isle of Wight, with 30 per cent of residents downloading it.
The prime minister is under pressure from his political opponents and backbenchers to outline a way out of lockdown. One cabinet minister referred to those pushing for dates in the roadmap as the “datists”.
However, Mr Johnson will say on Sunday that progress through the “roadmap” is conditional on a low and shrinking pool of coronavirus infection.
Initial data from a sampling exercise by the Office for National Statistics suggests that that prevalence of the infection in the population is between 0.2 and 0.6 per cent, said a well-placed source. This translates to up to 400,000 people infected nationwide.
Yesterday Sir Ian Diamond, head of the ONS, acknowledged that there were at least three times as many new cases every day as recorded by official figures. He agreed with estimates that daily cases were running at about 20,000, while it is understood that cabinet has been told the figure is between 16,000 and 18,000.
Official data confirmed by positive tests show 5,614 cases yesterday. A much higher daily infection rate significantly complicates government plans to control the next stage of the epidemic. It makes the strategy of tracing the contacts of known cases and isolating them to stop the spread of infection much more difficult.
Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who sits on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), warned that the present level of cases made it “probably impossible” to control the pandemic through contact tracing. “The incidence has to come right down for contact tracing to be feasible,” he warned MPs on the science and technology committee. The Isle of Wight is trialling the trace and test app but the hope is that its use can be extended elsewhere.
Sir Ian agreed with Professor Edmunds’s assessment that the R number had risen and was just below one, the point at which cases grow again.
Sir Ian said: “R has probably gone up just a little bit from his last estimates — that is driven by the epidemic in care homes. It a real challenge to reduce the epidemic in care homes.”
Professor Edmunds said that outbreaks had not worsened in care homes but national measurements of R were “dominated by” infections there that had not been brought under control as they had in the wider population.
He insisted: “The lockdown has worked, breaking chains of transmission in the community. But what’s left is a series of outbreaks in care homes and hospitals up and down the country that are on-going.”
Scientific advisers fear that outbreaks in care homes could “re-seed” the pandemic in the rest of the country and have told the government that uncertainty about whether they are being brought under control means lockdown needs to be eased more gradually.
Dominic Raab, the first secretary of state, said getting a grip on the crisis of care homes was the government’s “top focus” over the next month as it looks at easing further restrictions.
While he insisted that deaths were falling, the admission is likely to intensify questions about whether too many hospital patients were discharged to care homes in a rush to free beds.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing, Mr Raab said: “Our top focus is on the hospital infections and on the care settings. We’ve got a very robust and rigorous plan to really drive down the infection rate in those two settings over the next month.”
The extent to which Mr Johnson sets out dates by which measures could be relaxed remains “a live issue”, senior figures conceded last night.
