Scientists advising the Government have also said restrictions under the new national lockdown are too “lax” to tackle the spread of Covid-19 during the winter months. They believe the current lockdown may lead to a plateau of cases across the UK rather than the dramatic cut seen following the introduction of the first lockdown last March. Dr Simon Walsh, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, said the epidemiology from the previous wave indicates the situation is likely to worsen over the next two to three weeks.
The London-based emergency care doctor told BBC Breakfast: “I’m afraid all of us who are working on the frontline believe – and this is based on the evidence, I’m afraid – that it is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Dr Justin Varney, director of public health at Birmingham City Council, added hospitals had still not seen the full extent of patients who caught coronavirus over Christmas.
The former GP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We still haven’t seen the impact in the NHS of the rapid rise that we saw around December 28-29 after the Christmas bubble and after we started to see the new variant arriving in the region.
“It is going to get a lot, lot worse unless we really get this under control but some of that is already baked into the system and it is going to play out over the next week or two.”
Dr Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, added the new coronavirus variant should be treated as a “new pandemic within a pandemic”.
The Sage member told Today that people were heeding the stay-at-home message less than they did during the first lockdown, which was “concerning”.
He said: “Even if we went back to that last spring level of reduction in contacts, we couldn’t be confident we would see the same effects as we saw last year because of the increased transmission.
“We can think of this as a new pandemic within a pandemic.
“We need to get away from this idea that we’re going to see a repeat of what happened last spring and really face the possibility that this is much riskier and we’re going to have to work much harder to reduce the impact.”
It comes as a senior unnamed Sage official this week warned the actual number of Britons currently getting infected every day is closer to 150,000, claiming that the size of the second wave is now way worse than the first.
The warnings came as the Government doubled down on its stay-at-home message by launching a new advert, fronted by England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty, urging everyone in England to “act like you’ve got” coronavirus.
Yesterday Boris Johnson tweeted: “Our hospitals are under more pressure than at any other time since the start of the pandemic, and infection rates continue to soar at an alarming rate.
“The vaccine rollout has given us renewed hope, but it’s critical for now we stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.”
Professor Kevin Fenton, London regional director of Public Health England, said the more coronavirus patients the NHS has to deal with, the more difficult it is to keep other services open.
He told Today: “This is the challenge with the pandemic and why we’ve been asking people to really reduce mixing, because of the knock-on impact of this disease.
“Not only do you put severe strain on the health system but you prevent those with other health conditions who may also need urgent or important treatment from being able to access those services at the time.”
