Even as the British government is “very likely” to end all Covid-19 restrictions by July 19, the chief of a top doctors’ association in the United Kingdom has called upon the government to keep in place some compulsory safety measures to ensure that the progress made in the fight against the coronavirus disease is not “thrown away.”
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“We have made excellent progress with both the vaccination campaign and individual actions from the people across the country over the last 18 months, and the government must not throw this away at this critical juncture,” Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the council chair of the British Medical Association (BMA), said. Dr Nagpaul further warned that the infections continue to rise “at an alarming rate” due to the Delta variant of Covid-19, which was first found in India last year.
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The measures, which the BMA believes should remain in effect even beyond the expected date of the lifting of Covid-19 curbs, include face masks in enclosed places such as public transport, shops and healthcare settings, as well as social distancing messaging for people to gather in well-ventilated places.
“The sensible, cautious measures that we are proposing will be vital in maintaining not just the impact of rising case numbers on people’s individual health and the health services, but also in maintaining the wider damage to the economy and the society, caused by even further waves, new variants and lockdowns,” Dr Nagpaul further said.
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On the Delta variant he said it makes “no sense” to remove the restrictions in their entirety because cases are rising at an alarming rate due to a “rapid transmission” of the said variant. The rise in cases, he said, is also due to an increase in “people mixing with one another.”
In a warning for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, Dr Nagpaul said the ministers must not “simply disregard the most recent, damning numbers by rushing into meeting their July 19 deadline.” According to BMA’s data, weekly Covid-19 cases have risen 74% over the last seven days, while the number of new hospitalisations has increased 55% over the previous week.
On Friday, Public Health England (PHE) released its weekly data on variants of concern (VoC). The data showed a further 50,824 Covid-19 cases due to the Delta variant, a 46% rise from the previous week.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the United Kingdom has thus far seen 4,871,811 cases of the coronavirus disease, of which 128,453 cases have resulted in patients’ deaths.
(With PTI inputs)
