The coronavirus crisis is a ‘marathon not a sprint’ and could last for months, the Chief Medical Officer warned.
It came as scientists advising the Government said more than a quarter of a million people would have died of the disease in Britain without the stricter measures announced yesterday.
Boris Johnson raised the restrictions in response to the experts’ warning that twice as many people will require intensive care as previous planning estimates had assumed.
Chief medical officer for England Chris Witty says the race to beating to coronavirus pandem is a ‘marathon not a sprint’. Professor Witty is pictured arriving at the Cabinet Office in Whitehall on Monday
The new measures – including bans on social gatherings – could need to stay in place for around 18 months until a vaccine becomes available, the Imperial College London researchers said.
If no action at all had been taken against the coronavirus, it would have claimed 510,000 lives.
Had the Government stuck with their strategy of controlling the spread with limited measures such as home isolation for those with symptoms this number would be roughly halved to 260,000. If the strictest possible measures are introduced – including school closures and mandatory home quarantine – the number of deaths over a two-year period will fall below 20,000, the scientists said.
Professor Neil Ferguson, lead author of the study, said: ‘Instead of talking about hundreds of thousands of deaths, there still will be a significant health impact that we’ll be talking about. Hopefully, tens of thousands… maybe, depending on how early we are, just a few thousands.’
The scientists emphasised there will be no end in sight to the measures until a vaccine is created.
Professor Azra Ghani, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology from the virus modelling team, warned: ‘We have explored a scenario where these measures stayed in place for five months, which is what is taking us through to the summer.
‘We haven’t found any way, at least in our understanding of this so far, that we can ever release these methods until some other intervention can be put in place.
‘So really, we are essentially waiting for a vaccine. A vaccine is not five months away. We know it’s at least 12 to 18 months away. So we will have difficult choices to make.’
Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, said that social lockdown in Britain over coronavirus could last for a prolonged period.
He said: ‘This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint… People should be thinking of minimum of weeks to months and depending how it goes it could be longer. It is really important people realise they are in for the long haul on this.’
The Government brought forward the much stricter restrictions after it was stung by criticism that it was not moving as fast as other countries.
Ministers have been shocked by figures that suggest the UK will suffer more deaths than the current modelling had predicted.
Initially, Mr Johnson resisted pressure to bring in ‘social distancing’ for fear that people would grow fatigued and abandon the practice just as the virus began to peak.
Yesterday’s measures went far further than previous advice, though they remain voluntary, so pubs are not required to shut, and people are not being ordered to stay at home.
Professor Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London, was the author of a study that suggested measures such as a ban on social gatherings could last for up to 18 months
The Prime Minister said it was unlikely that curfews and criminal sanctions could be introduced in the near future to enforce this – but added that all measures are under review. He said the UK already has extensive powers to deal with potential breaches of orders. He told the press conference: ‘Most people would accept we are already a mature and liberal democracy where people understand very clearly the advice that is being given to them.’
The Imperial College London study revealed that had Ministers continued to follow their relatively limited ‘mitigation’ strategy, around 11,000 patients would have needed intensive care at any one time, more than double NHS capacity.
The stricter measures could keep the number of patients in intensive care below 5,000, they said.
The report said vaccination was the ‘only exit strategy’ from the draconian measures announced yesterday. Modelling by the scientists says that school and university closures will be necessary to keep deaths to a minimum.
‘A minimum policy for effective suppression is therefore population-wide social distancing, combined with home isolation of cases and school and university closure,’ it says. ‘To avoid a rebound in transmission, these policies will need to be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available – which could be 18 months or more.’
The research also revealed that around a quarter of over-70s who contract the virus end up in hospital. Four in ten of these need critical care.