Coronavirus, UK lockdown could be indefinite

Now UK is in lockdown mode: scientist warned UK could face indefinite lockdown if vaccine still not find.

Now UK is in lockdown mode. Work from home has enforced and more people asking until when the government lockdown UK. Scientist warned UK could face indefinite lockdown if vaccine still not find. Scientist make modelling how the disease could sweep through the country, kill more than 250,000 Britons and overwhelm the NHS forced Boris Johnson’s change in tack March 17th.

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Coronavirus, UK lockdown

The scientist from Imperial College London’s Centre for Global Infectious Disease said the world only able to buy time rather than stop the virus spreading. They estimated NHS can cope but would still lead to up to 20,000 deaths. The scientist also warned whatever the government’s steps will no end in sight for the world without vaccine. Countries may have to go through repeated cycles.

Professor Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology, said the government had wrestled with the idea of adopting strict measures and then going back to normal.

He said: “We don’t think that’s now possible. “It does leave the world in a quandary that what we would expect to happen is when we lift these measures that transmission would resume.”

He warned that the modelling showed that restricting people’s social lives would in effect only buy the world “a breather”, adding this was the “main downside of where the world sees itself now”. He added: “We may well be ending up in a really quite different world for at least a year or more.” Asked if this was unparalleled in human history, Professor Ferguson said it was, adding: “The idea of controlling a virus like this, while still having a vaguely normal society does put us in uncharted territory.”

His colleague Professor Azra Ghani, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology added: “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. “If the transmission characteristics of the virus stay as they are, then I think we are in this situation. But it’s a situation we face and the world as a whole faces.”