Indian strain puts UK ‘Freedom Day’ at risk- any increase of mixing in indoor spaces to be highly inadvisable

Boris intends to lift all limits on social contact from June 21, but this plan is now in doubt

People enjoy having drinks outside a pub in London on April 16 when restrictions had eased

Telegraph picture

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Amit Roy   |  TT  |  London   |  16.05.21: People in England are currently allowed to go to restaurants and pubs but they have to sit outside on a chilly pavement for a meal or a pint of beer. However, from Monday, Boris Johnson is relaxing the lockdown rules so that customers will be able to enter the premises.

As things stand the Prime Minister intends to lift all limits on social contact from June 21 but this plan is now in doubt because of the spread of the Indian variant of the Covid virus (B.1.617).

Front page headlines in Saturday’s newspapers tell only one story in stark terms:  Indian Variant Threat to June Freedom (Daily Mail); Threat to Freedom Day (Daily Mirror); Lockdown easing at risk (Times); Real risk of disruption to our plans, warns PM (Daily Telegraph); New variant threatens to delay end of lockdown (Guardian); and Covid variant puts June reopening for England at risk, Johnson warns (FT).

The Right wing of the Conservative party, backed by papers such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, has been pressing Boris to go even faster in relaxing lockdown — mainly for Trump-type ideological reasons.

Steve Baker, of the 70-strong “Covid Recovery Group” of Tory MPs, said ministers should not be considering extending lockdowns: “Why on earth would we lock down when the vaccines continue to break the link between cases and hospitalisations and deaths?”

But the scientists and medical experts are urging Boris to be more cautious. So far “only” 4 people out of 97 died of the Indian variant between May 5 and May 12.

However, computer modelling predicts that if the Indian variant is 50 per cent more transmissible than the more dominant one from Kent, there could be up to 20,000 hospital admissions a day by the summer in the worst case scenario.

January’s peak, which nearly crippled the NHS, was around 3,800 hospital admissions a day in England. The UK death toll, which hit a record 1,820 on January 20, would be proportionately higher.

Indian origin doctors, who are in touch with relatives back in India, know only too well the grim consequences when governments take wrong decisions.

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a lecturer in epidemiology at Queen Mary’s University of London, told (the new Rupert Murdoch owned) Times Radio: “If it’s growing now, with current restrictions, we can’t afford to be easing restrictions. We are seeing rapid exponential growth.

“And if we ease restrictions further, that’s leading us straight into another lockdown.”

Prof. Ravi Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at Cambridge University, gave Sky News his reservations on a premature easing of lockdown rules: “The problem is that (the variant) has seeded so quickly that it’s probably spread to other areas. So we may get dissemination of the virus before the vaccine has taken effect. It’s going to be a difficult decision and it’s 50:50 at the moment.”

Scientists from SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), which met in an emergency session on Thursday , said afterwards: “In the light of the new variant, we consider that any increase of mixing in indoor spaces (whether domestic or commercial) to be highly inadvisable, particularly in areas with already proven high levels of B.1.617.2.

“Accordingly, local directors of public health should have the discretion to determine when the relaxation of measures can safely occur.

“Additionally, indoor commercial spaces should only be allowed to reopen if they can maintain adequate social distancing and have proper ventilation, with a priority programme of inspection developed in co-operation with the Health and Safety Executive.”