No, London is unlikely to run out of COVID-19 cases in a few weeks

There have been numerous reports suggesting that COVID-19 may be “cleaned up in London within a few weeks”.

The capital is reported to be less than 24 a day, two months after suffering 200,000 a day.

This claim is based on conclusions drawn from joint modeling by the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Public Health England and the University of Cambridge. It tracks the infection rate (R value). ..

If R is 1, one person infected with the virus will infect the other one on average, so the proportion of infected people remains about the same.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the UK R number was 3. In other words, the R number was 3 for all infected people, so the infection rate rises rapidly.

Public Health Studies by the MRC Biostatics Unit at the University of England and Cambridge currently show UK R-rates of 0.75 to well below 1.0. This is one of the key requirements that Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented before further relaxing the lockdown restrictions.

According to the data, the R-rate for London is 0.4. That is, for every 10 people infected with the virus, it will infect the other 4 people.

Meanwhile, more than 4,000 new cases are recorded daily in northeastern England and Yorkshire, followed by 2,380 new infections daily in northwestern England.

But can London’s infectious diseases be completely wiped out in a matter of weeks, as suggested?

Professor David Hayman, an infectious disease epidemiologist and public health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Medicine, has a different idea.

He warns against conclusions drawn quickly from the data.

“I don’t think so,” Professor Hayman said, “the official case is less than 24 a day, and the daily infection rate halves every 3.5 days, so I was asked if I could wipe out the capital city in a few weeks.”

He says that some things are appropriate for this to be more possible.

“It depends on whether there is a swift response mechanism to respond to an outbreak as it occurs, and whether there is a surveillance system in London,” he told Newsweek.

“We need to make sure that all cases coming to London are identified and all cases in London are detected. We need to separate them all, track contacts and separate all those people. Therefore, there is no guarantee. ”

Professor Hayman said there is a need for a system to quickly detect and respond to new clusters before any blockade in a region can be fully mitigated.

“If the infection rate is declining, that’s a good sign,” says Hayman, but there are no identified cases of persistent infection in London, or cases may be imported from other regions. It’s true that there is no incident. ”

According to a study by the British Medical Journal last month, 78% of people with COVID-19 have no symptoms but represent the “source” of an infectious disease.

Meanwhile, the UK government has set a goal of testing 200,000 people a day by the end of this month, but according to the latest Ministry of Health and Social Welfare statistics, as of 9am this morning, the COVID- test was 2,353,078. There were 19 tests nationwide, and 133,784 tests were conducted on May 14.

The government has previously been criticized for falling below the 100,000 goal after it was achieved.

On Saturday, May 2, the minister said less than 76,500 tests were conducted, a decrease of more than one-third of the 122,000 tests conducted on April 30.

When Secretary of Health Matt Hancock announced that the government had reached 100,000 tests on the last day of April and reached 122,000 tests, the figures show that homes for people not yet received. Contains 40,000 tests submitted.

The actual number of COVID-19 cases in London could be much higher than the official figures suggest, as the overwhelming majority of the population has not been tested and the number of asymptomatic cases is unknown. there is.

The allegation that COVID-19 could be completely wiped out in London in a few weeks was the result of no asymptomatic or undetected cases, or people in other areas traveling to London for work. Based on the assumption that you didn’t have COVID-19.

Newsweek Public Health We sought comments from England and the Department of Health.