As Britain prepares to remove virtually all restrictions from Monday, a former UK health secretary has warned that the government may have to reimpose lockdown if the current trend of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases continues. Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that hospitalisations related to coronavirus are doubling every two weeks and about 10,000 Covid-19 patients could end up in hospital by the end of August, twice the number than last year.
“The warning light on the NHS dashboard is not flashing amber, it is flashing red,” he said. “It is a very serious situation.”
On Friday, the UK reported more than 51,000 new Covid-19 cases, the highest in six months. The worrying third Covid wave, mainly driven by the Delta variant, has prompted scientists and experts around the world to warn the government against removing all restrictions. More than 1,200 scientists have backed a letter published in The Lancet earlier this month, calling the decision “dangerous and unethical.”
Meanwhile, the UK government has shown no sign of backtracking from its decision, even though it has toned down on branding July 19 as the “Freedom Day.” Hunt predicted that the country is “almost certainly” going to witness a record daily peak by September. The current daily record of new Covid cases was reported in early January with nearly 68,000 cases.
“If they are still going up as the schools are coming back I think we are going to have to reconsider some very difficult decisions. How we behave over the next few weeks will have a material difference,” he added.
Britain has pinned its hopes on high vaccination rates, with more than 52% of the population fully vaccinated and 16% partly vaccinated. But a large population is still vulnerable to the virus, given the reduced efficacy of vaccines, as per various studies, against variants of concern.
