In the absence of a vaccine for the covid-19 virus, the UK government has resisted the drastic ‘social distancing’ and taking other containment measures that are used in most countries and has considered allow the disease to spread so that there is no collapse of public health services of the nation of 66 million.
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The concept of so-called ‘collective immunity’ is an option the government is exploring in its effort to treat the coronavirus, by allowing it to spread to younger people who are less at risk of dying, according to Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser to the United Kingdom.
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For example, all schools in the UK, public and private, remain open and have no plans to close.
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“If you remove something very, very hard, when you release those measures, it recovers and recovers at the wrong time,” Vallance told the BBC.
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“What we don’t want is for everyone to end up catching on in a short period of time, so we will flood and overwhelm the services [del Servicio Nacional de Salud]”he added.
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The UK has had 1,551 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon and 55 deaths, according to data from the latest count compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That is a considerably lower infection rate than other countries in Europe, such as Spain and Italy, which have many more cases despite having lower populations.
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The UK’s approach to dealing with the coronavirus pandemic has been in stark contrast to other countries, including the United States. All of Italy and Spain are under national closure, while the French government ordered the closure of all non-essential public places.
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Mixed messages
Despite many mixed messages from the White House, the British approach also represents the complete opposite of President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration over the weekend, as well as expert advice from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). ).
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The United States has had at least 4,661 confirmed coronavirus cases and 85 deaths. The coronavirus has infected 181,200 people worldwide and caused at least 7,115 deaths, according to John Hopkins.
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The idea proposed in the United Kingdom is to separate people with a lower risk of dying from the highest risk group, that is, people over the age of 70 and who have pre-existing conditions. According to collective immunity theoryIf about 60% of the lowest risk group contracts the virus and builds resistance to infection, this could reduce the risk of transmitting it to the highest risk group.
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People aged nine months and younger are believed to have the strongest natural defenses against the virus.
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Since most people will eventually contract the virus anyway, this strategy could avoid the kinds of major economic disruptions that the world is currently witnessing, advocates of this route say. If it works, it could help spread the virus without overwhelming hospitals with sick people, while allowing daily life to continue, without completely closing public areas, canceling major events, and introducing travel bans.
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“Many more families are going to lose their loved ones prematurely,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned, adding that the coronavirus pandemic was the “worst public health crisis in a generation.”
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Change of tone
On Monday, Johnson changed his tone a bit, although he still seemed to opt for a calibrated response. “We have to go further, because … it appears that we are now approaching the rapidly growing part of the upward curve,” he said.
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It wasn’t as far as the United States, where Trump recommended Monday to avoid all public gatherings of more than ten people. Instead, Johnson advised the British public, especially those over the age of 70, “to stop nonessential contact with others,” avoiding bars, clubs, theaters, and other social venues.
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By the weekend, he said it would be necessary to go further and quarantine anyone who shows the most serious health conditions, and ensure that he is protected from social contact for about 12 weeks.
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“I don’t fully understand, and I think a lot of people don’t understand, how letting us all do our jobs won’t make many people sick in a short time,” a UK public employee told Univision News, asking not to be named.
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“But with the use of the subway and the bus going down around 20% or more, and people who avoid rush hour, a very slight degree of social distancing is already being introduced into daily life, which should slow down the things, “he added.
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Risks
Critics say allowing a virus to slowly infect low-risk people to create immunity is very risky, despite the UK’s hugely free public health system. They point out that the success of such a strategy would depend on the ability to keep those two groups separate.
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More of 200 scientists have written to the government urging them to introduce tougher measures to tackle the spread of covid-19. In an open letter, the 229 specialists say the current UK approach will put the National Health Service under additional stress and “He will risk many more lives than necessary.”
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They argued that “pursuing ‘collective immunity’ at the moment does not appear to be a viable option”, instead they called for stronger social distancing measures that would dramatically reduce the rate of growth of the disease in the UK.
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A Health Department spokesman told the BBC that Vallance’s comments they had been misinterpreted. “Collective immunity is not part of our action plan, but it is a natural by-product of an epidemic. Our goals are to save lives, protect the most vulnerable and relieve pressure on our health service,” he said.
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Rory Stewart, a former secretary for international development running for mayor of London, told reporters that the government should have acted to close schools and events weeks ago.
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Can you have tea with friends?
Former UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also told the BBC that Britain should take a more aggressive approach along the lines that the United States is currently taking.
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“If then we are going to have tea with our friend who is recovering from cancer, our grandfather, our grandmother, that is the problem,” he said. “It is surprising and worrying that we don’t do any of that when we have only four weeks before we get to the stage that Italy is in,” he added.
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Collective immunity only works when a third or half of the population has already been exposed to the virus, which breaks the chain of transmission, Szapocznik explained to Univision News. “If half the population has antibodies, that limits the spread because infected cases are more likely to meet people who already have antibodies,” he said.
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“The fallacy is that it means that between half and two thirds of people have to contract the disease” added. In the case of the United Kingdom, that means between 33 and 44 million people, with the possibility of up to 800,000 deaths.
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Although the United States is already taking more aggressive steps to combat the virus, “if we had started testing six weeks ago, when the first cases began in Washignton state, we could have confined this by tracing contacts and quarantining the people who were exposed, “he said.
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“Instead we will have to close the entire country to deal with this,” he added.
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