Second block unlikely that hospitalizations will decrease as before – POLITICAL

Britain’s coronavirus hospitalization rates are unlikely to drop as quickly during the country’s second lockdown as they did in the spring, according to a leading government science advisor.

Professor Angela McLean, Deputy Chief Science Advisor, said she expected hospitalization rates to drop before the planned end of restrictions on December 2, but urged the country not to expect the same results as before.

He said at a press conference organized by number 10: “During the blockade in March, the number of hospitalizations … has halved every three weeks. I don’t think we will achieve it. I would say, I don’t think we’ll be halving before December 2nd. Here we go, what do you say if I put it like this? Because then if we are wrong, we can all be happy “.

Public Health England’s Dr Susan Hopkins told reporters that while the government was “eager to spend a Christmas as close to normal as possible,” the public should “make every effort during this period of national restriction, and also early December, to get the cases … as low as possible. “

Among reports that ministers are considering easing restrictions for the Christmas period, Hopkins pointed out that previous scientific models suggested “for each day we publish we will need two days of tighter restrictions.” A Public Health England spokesperson later clarified that Hopkins mispronounced and said the updated modeling showed that “for each day of relaxation, five days of tighter restrictions would potentially be needed.”

The latest data shows that the COVID-19 reproduction rate is declining in the UK. It is now estimated to be between 1 and 1.2, down from 1.2 to 1.5 in October.

The number of people who test positive for COVID-19 is still growing, but less rapidly than in recent weeks, the scientists said. In the first week of October, one in 160 people had COVID; it’s now about one in 85, based on data from an Office for National Statistics study, which tests the same families every week.

Professor Stephen Powis, medical director of the NHS, said that in England, over 1,000 new COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized in the past week, bringing the total to over 14,400.

With hospitalization rates lagging behind infection rates, Powis said the effects of the lockdown measures will not be carried into the hospitalization data for some time.

With the pressure on health services, he said it was “really important this winter, these numbers go down.”

This article is part of POLITICpremium policy service from: Pro HealthCare. From drug pricing, to the EMA, vaccines, pharmaceuticals and more, our specialist journalists keep you up to date on the topics driving the health policy agenda. E-mail [email protected] for a free trial.