UK: repeated ‘mini lockdown’s could help control Covid spread, says scientific adviser
One of the British government’s scientific advisers has said repeated “mini lockdowns” could be effective as a tool to bring Covid-19 cases under control.
The suggestion from Professor John Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), comes amid growing evidence the virus’s prevalence is growing among older, more vulnerable people.
A circuit breaker, or mini-lockdown can be used to reset the clock. The idea would be to bring the incidence back to what it was a few weeks earlier. You replace two weeks of exponential growth with two weeks of a decline in cases.
This can have a big effect on the total number of cases, particularly if it is implemented shortly after the epidemic starts to grow.
A reporting team at the Observer have put together a longer read meanwhile on how Britain finds itself in a situation where infections are starting to dramatically rise again at a time when other nations have managed to stabilise or suppress the spread of the virus.
But they also note that scientists are still arguing over the reasons some countries seem to have been spared heavy death tolls even as the infection spreads.
A relatively young population may be less vulnerable than in fast-ageing western disease hotspots. People living in overcrowded conditions may have stronger immune systems, fortified by fighting off many past infections. But if it is hard to predict how Covid epidemics will develop, it is much easier to see what keeps the disease at bay.
The few countries that have managed to effectively eliminate coronavirus range from authoritarian China to liberal democracies such as Taiwan and New Zealand.
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The situation in Morocco will worsen over winter as the flu season overlaps, according to the director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, who said many hospitals and test sites for Covid-19 are expected to reach capacity.
Mohamed Lyoubi, added during a webinar that the situation will also affect the ability of health authorities to carry out case investigations and ensure contact follow-up and monitoring of patients treated at home.
Morocco’s testing program is increasingly overwhelmed, reports the Associated Press. With air and sea borders closed for months and eight cities barring people from entering or leaving, the news agency reports that authorities have been pulling out the stops to stanch the spread of coronavirus.
Marrakech, a major tourist destination, is at a standstill, while police checks are part of the scenery in hard-hit Casablanca, the country’s economic powerhouse.
In the northern city of Tangiers, military vehicles were deployed last month to help enforce measures there. Movement between the city and others was stopped, as it was in Casablanca, barring exceptional authorizations.
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The British government wants university students to be able to return home for Christmas, a minister has said, as a focus builds up on the plight of thousands of students who are already isolating amid Covid-19 outbreaks.
“I very much want students to be able to go home at Christmas,” Culture Minister Oliver Dowden told Sky News.
The opposition Labour Party has called for the start of university term to be delayed while an “effective, efficient testing system” is put in place.
The UK’s daily coronavirus death toll will rise from 34 to 100 a day in three to four weeks’ time, an expert on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) warned on Saturday.
Eve Livingston and Donna Ferguson have meanwhile filed this piece on the misery of ‘lockdown freshers’ in Scotland.
“Physically I feel tired and drained, I’ve got a sore throat and I can’t taste,” they were told by Theo Lockett, 19 (below), who moved to Glasgow two weeks ago from the English city of York.
“Emotionally it’s miserable; you can’t meet new people, you can’t go to campus, you can’t go home. It feels like you’ve come all this way to start a new life and you’ve ended up locked in a house for two weeks.”
France: third of new clusters in schools and universities
In France, where a doctors’ leader has warned that the latest wave of the pandemic could “overwhelm” the country amid exhaustion on the part of health workers, Le Monde reports that a third of the new clusters are in schools and universities.
The latest figures from health officials indicate that 32% of the 899 clusters under investigation concern schools and universities.
Patrick Bouet, head of the National Council of the Order of Doctors, meanwhile told the weekly Journal du Dimanche: ““The second wave is arriving faster than we thought.”
Fresh restrictions to slow the spread of the disease in the country’s worst-hit areas, including the Mediterranean city of Marseille and the Paris region, have run into local resistance.
Bouet told the paper that warnings delivered this week by Health Minister Olivier Veran had not gone far enough.
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Anti lockdown activists in the UK today are reeling today after police broke up a protest in central London when thousands of people defied their advice and demonstrated against restrictions, mass vaccinations, mandatory wearing of face masks and other coronavirus rules.
Sixteen arrests were made, according to the police, who also say that and nine officers were injured.
Groups behind the protest, who also plan a ‘family picnic’ a noon in London’s Hyde Park, have meanwhile been accusing the force of heavy handedness and signposting followers to lawyers and complaints lines.
The tensions comes as Britain, or perhaps England in particular, has reached a crossroads, reports Robin McKie and Toby Helm in the Observer, who have been looking at an increasingly heated debate over whether to readopt stringent measures or return to ‘the business of living.’
On one side there are the ‘lockdowners’. They think the only hope of triumphing over Covid-19 is shutdowns to bring numbers of cases back under control. Pubs and restaurants may have to close and households once again may be told not to mix.
On the other are the ‘libertarians’. They say we cannot return to those days because it would trigger an economic collapse and allow thousands of untreated cases of cancer, heart ailments and other diseases to mount. Tens of thousands might die, they say.
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Boris Johnson faces pressures in UK
Boris Johnson is facing a massive parliamentary revolt over the way he is imposing Covid-19 restrictions on the British people without first consulting MPs – amid new signs that confidence in his leadership is collapsing in the Conservative party and across the country.
An extraordinary cross-party backlash against Johnson’s “rule by diktat” from Downing Street was taking shape last night – ahead of a key vote on Wednesday – as a new poll by Opinium for the Observer showed Labour has overtaken the Tories for the first time since Keir Starmer became leader in April.
That story is the splash in today’s Observer. The Sunday Times also has a spread (paywall) inside on what it describes as a “PM at breaking point.”
This weekend there is the looming threat of a second wave of the coronavirus and differences over the government’s approach, reports Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times. But he adds that there are tensions in the cabinet over how to save the economy
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, reportedly opposed proposals earlier this month that pubs and restaurants should be shut.
Both Johnson’s office and Sunak’s office at No 11 Downing Street dismissed “totally untrue” rumours that the chancellor threatened to resign if there was a “fortnight firewall” lockdown.
“The debate was whether you would be better having two or three weeks where you close down hospitality and try to drive down the virus quickly,” a source told the Sunday Times.
“But there are costs. Lockdown is not a good option for the country and we need to educate people about the costs.”
Almost half of British companies have warned that their Brexit preparations have been hit by the pandemic, as business leaders demanded a last-minute compromise to reach a trade deal and avert chaos at the border.
As a crucial week of talks begins, more than three-quarters of businesses (77%) said they wanted a deal to be agreed, according to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry. Only 4% of businesses said they preferred a no-deal outcome. Support for a deal rises to 86% among distribution companies and 83% of manufacturers.
Mixed messages have been coming from Downing Street and Brussels over the likelihood of a deal. No 10 had been talking up the possibility of an agreement after months in which no progress has been made – with the chances of a no-deal Brexit significantly increasing.
New Yorkers are looking forward this weekend to the prospect of eating inside a restaurant for the first time in six months as the city plans to allow for interior dining from Wednesday.
restaurants can seat customers inside at 25% capacity, the latest relaxation in the quarantine rules imposed on New York after the coronavirus struck.
Owners who spoke to the Guardian described it as a make-or-break moment heading into the winter.
PA: University students in the UK must be allowed to return home to their families at Christmas, Labour has said, amid fears that coronavirus outbreaks could keep young people in halls when term ends.
Thousands of students are currently confined to their rooms following a surge in cases at institutions including Glasgow, Manchester Metropolitan and Edinburgh Napier.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock last week declined to rule out asking students to stay on campus over Christmas, after Government scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport said the measure may be needed to stop the virus spreading to older relatives.
Shadow education secretary Kate Green has written to her opposite number Gavin Williamson, urging him to “promise” students that such restrictions will not be imposed.
She said it would be “deeply unfair to see students forced to remain in their student accommodation” and asked Williamson to “work with universities to ensure every student has access to testing to allow a safe journey home” for Christmas.
Green also asked the Education Secretary to consider a delay to the start of term or a “pause in migration” for universities where term has not yet begun to allow improvements in testing capacity and remote learning provisions.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “the Government is working closely with universities to ensure they are well prepared for the return of students, and we have published guidance to help them keep students and staff as safe as possible.
“Students should follow the latest health advice, just like the wider public, which means they should stay at university in the event that they have symptoms, have to isolate, there are additional restrictions imposed locally, or there is an outbreak on campus or in their accommodation.
“We will continue monitoring the situation very closely and follow Public Health England advice, adapting policies to best support students and providers.”
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A Key West team is expected to enforce a new mandate allowing people to go maskless outdoors if they are 6ft apart – an impossible task among partygoers. This feature from Jessica Glenza in Key West, Florida.
Key West code enforcement officer Paul Navarro was halfway through his shift and beginning to see signs of trouble. The crowds on lower Duval Street swelled just after 9pm, and social distancing quickly became impossible on the sidewalks.
Navarro is the last line of defense against the high-risk behaviors which spread Covid-19 and is one of the principal enforcers of the Florida city’s mask mandate – an effort to protect public health and the local economy. Until 16 September part of that balancing act had included a strict mask mandate, now that rule has been loosened.
Patricia Hanson, from rural Crawfordville, approached Navarro to question him vigorously about whether Key West’s mask mandate makes allowances for federal disability rights laws (it does).
“I feel they are not following science, I feel they’re out of fear, and I feel a lot of the politicians who are telling us to wear them are not wearing them themselves,” said Hanson, 50. If her health was “compromised”, she would want to reach “herd immunity as soon as possible”, she said, referencing a discredited Covid-19 containment strategy that experts say would mean more than 200 million people would have to recover from the disease to halt the epidemic.
In the UK: Dentists face a “tsunami” of untreated tooth decay because children have been kept away from dental surgeries during lockdown.
Half of parents in the UK said their children had missed a check-up since March, according to an Opinium survey for the Association of Dental Groups (ADG), which represents practices across the country.
The survey of 2,000 people included 622 parents, with 31% saying their family had decided not to go for a check-up or make an appointment. Another 13% said they had not been able to get an appointment – a sign of the growing problem of delays caused by the pandemic.
Dental practices were forced to shut after coronavirus hit, but have been allowed to reopen since 8 June.
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