What Impact Could Rising Cases Have On The Ending Of Covid Restrictions?
A slow but steady fall taking us to a moment that not so long ago appeared beyond our wildest dreams recorded covered death down to zero across the UK.Yesterday a first since last July allowing a time for reflection on loved ones.We lost a time for some relief but not yet a time for celebration as covert shows.It's not finished with us yet in the five months since the January lockdown Covid has slowly and then dramatically been on the wane in recent weeks a small but unmistakable rise in cases a full sense of security in the eyes of some the kent or now renamed alpha variant the cause of the spike late last year is falling away but the Indian now known as delta variant is on the rise put them together and the rise looks modest just focus on the variant discovered in India and the rising cases is more stark and that mixed picture is playing out on the ground in Scotland a delay in the easing of restrictions as large parts of the central belt will remain in level two but Glasgow which has been in the higher level three will move down a tier on Saturday and because of the vaccination program.
We can still look ahead with
confidence but and this is the difficult part in areas where cases are
relatively high or rising our judgment is that a slight slowing down of the
easing of restrictions
to allow time for more people to be fully
vaccinated will help protect that progress overall
and they're really doing well pointed
remarks aimed perhaps at the prime minister the need for caution echoed by one leading
scientist advising the UK government stressing
that he's speaking in a personal
capacity i think most of us who are looking at the figures and their advising
government would say that we really are not confident at the moment that
opening up on the 21st would be
would be safe my view at the moment is that we have to
be very cautious about opening up we
really need to watch the data over the next
week or two and then really did make
a decision based on not only the transmission
but also, on the severity of disease
that's being caused and whether the vaccines that are being
stepped up at a greater rate now
will help to control the transmission pressure as Boris Johnson ponders his plan
for the lifting of social restrictions in England in three weeks’ time decision
time is two weeks away and downing
street is not yet signaling a change of tack.
But it is eyeing the data carefully conservative
MPs are watching the scientists with a familiar wariness one ally of the prime
minister told me. He's just got to follow his instincts and unlock then this MP
added does he actually trust his instincts anymore another conservative MP told
me they did expect an unlocking later this month though they believe there will
still be
cautionary measures such as the widespread
wearing of masks one tory backbencher believes
there are grounds to unlock whatever
some scientists may say scientists who are just looking at one issue might come
up with a different conclusion but the prime minister has to
look at all the issues and decide
what's right and you know if there are zero deaths
today in the whole United Kingdom
and there was only one death reported yesterday for the whole United Kingdom.
It really does seem that the world leading
vaccination program that this government has developed is succeeding perhaps
even better than expected calm in an era of uncertainty
mid-summer is nearly upon us when England
is due to embark on a new path but Covid
is doing its best to disrupt those
plans nick what will joining me now is professor sir mark Wal pot who sits on sage
the government's scientific advisor group for emergency.
I'm also joined by professor Robert Dingwall
who advises the government on covert policy
and sky ginger us Michelin starred
chef and owner of the spring restaurant good evening to you all uh so mark Walpole
first of all uh why could it be a good idea do you think to
delay the full opening up on the
21st well it's a matter of um controlling the pandemic in the best
possible way and I'm afraid
instincts is not the approach here it's data um and as peter Openshaw has just
said there is a great deal of uncertainty essentially there are three moving
parts so there's the new viral variant the so-called now delta variant the Indian
variant which is more
transmissible but we don't know
exactly. How much more transmissible there's how people behave and we've had an
easing of lockdown two weeks ago.
We're only just starting to see the effects
of that and then of course there's the vaccine
program which is very successful but
50 of the adult population have only had one dose of the vaccine so far so when
are we likely to know the link is broken between infection hospitalization and
death and where are you going to get this data well it will come out over the
next two or three weeks I think that's fairly clear there'll be certainly more
data for the 14th of June than there is now so there'll be data for a week
prior to that has always been the plan that actually the data will be looked at
a week prior and the best way to reduce the uncertainty as much possible is to
have as much data as possible is there something about the nature of risk and
how our relationship with risk has changed during the pandemic there's always
going
to be hot spots there may be new
variants but the more we vaccinate surely absolutely but i think we are familiar
and recognize the risk associated with influenza and to go back to your
question about breaking the link I mean it is clear that the vaccine is reducing
severe disease and deaths so you know on that side things are going very well indeed
but there are an awful lot of people who
are still incompletely vaccinated and
we will get to live with coronavirus because it's not going to go away, we're not
going to eliminate it completely but we're not ready to live with it to
the extent that we open up in the 21st
century if we opened up completely now there's definitely the risk of a significant
further wave Robert dingle what do you say is there anything you've heard there
that leads you to favor a delay I suppose the one area on which I would agree
with sir mark is that we don't really need to be having this debate at this
time and I think that uh i feel forced into it with some reluctance by the uh
the extent to which the fear and anxiety
that has been amplified over the last year has permeated sections of the
medical and scientific community and really sort of push this debate much earlier
than it really needs to be had but frankly i think that we have this reluctance
to trust the vaccines and we have a reluctance to take a broader look at the
social economic psychological damage that is being inflicted and which would be
aggravated if the um the measure if June
the 21st does not uh prove to be the date on which the
the majority of restrictions are
lifted so it's a question of balance uh what you're saying is all those things like social uh
you know economic uh mental well-being and so forth balance out the possible
uptick that we are seeing with the uptick we are seeing in the Indian variant
now called the delta vane and any possible uptick in the future in other hot
spots that that balances
out in your view towards opening
indeed I think that what we're seeing is we are now in a situation where by the
decision date all the uh most vulnerable groups in the population will have the
opportunity to have two doses of the jab to develop the appropriate degree of
immunity the
virus will still be circulating
among younger age groups who are intrinsically at very much
lower risk and we're seeing this i
mean hospitalizations are no longer a very good measure of the risk as smirk is
saying as the director of public health the Bolton was saying last week the
people going into hospital now are
not desperately ill in the way that they were in January
these are people who are have a mild
community infection and need a bit of
support with breathing and the only
way they can do that is by going to hospital to get access to
oxygen and to the dexamethasone therapies
that our scientists have so brilliantly
pioneered interestingly mark Wolpert
to a lay
person um help with breathing never
seems to be something that is actually mild it may well be but it doesn't seem
that way are we just again going to have to live with the
risk that some of these people who
have to go in and don't necessarily respond to dexamethasone are going to
become perhaps more ill well that is of course the race between the vaccine and
the virus which is of course the more people we can vaccinate I mean at the
moment we do know that the vaccination seems to be effective against the most severe
infections but it's not complete protection well I was going to ask you because
the um the date for total vaccination for
the ovary teens to be completed is by the end of July even on the basis of the
vaccinations
would you be happier to wait until
that happens what I want to see is the best possible data for the policy makes
the politicians to be able to decide and so people are pressing for there is
still two weeks of important
information to come do you think that's the case Robert
dingle that t two weeks of important
information could actually provide
some evidence that we need to delay
or do you think we're beyond that well I think the only thing that would convince
me that we needed a further delay um would be uh about
a significant intensive care
admission um I mean when you're talking about support for breathing, we're not
talking here about the sort of intensive ventilation we get in intensive care
and we're talking about the external oxygen therapy I mean basically people
with an oxygen
mask who are getting a bit of extra
help and I think that if we look at the modeling exercises I’m you know i think
the modelers do their job for what it's worth it's quite clear that a short
further delay really doesn't make very much difference to the trajectory of the
of this infection at the cost of a devastating blow to national morale and to
the further delay and damage to the uh economic and social life of the country at
which point I want to bring in the show skydiving on that very point about the
economic issues that would flow from further delay what is the uncertainty
doing to your industry at the moment well I think um I think the whole year has
been such a huge struggle and um I suppose if I’m being very honest I am very
concerned I mean I think we're
desperate to open and it's the long
call for us to get back to normal but the idea that there may have to be a closure
further on down the line I think it's almost more devastating than waiting a
little while so you would actually let's be quickly if you thought this was the
final time that you would have to consider any uh formal restrictions you would
rather wait before you got everything going again and had to then have further
restrictions imposed on you down the line I would yes so just mark Walpole what
will actually if we don't be clear about the 21st and June
and the 28th of June in Scotland we're
talking about no social distancing uh nightclubs open football matches remove
the government talks about removing all legal limits that is what is planned
let's be quite clear there's going to be no restrictions well that is the that
that is the implications of the 21st of June as things stand up and we know
that even without a new variant
there would have been an increase in
cases associated with opening up but on that question is going to be no
restriction at all you have no concerns in the restaurant trade about that total
opening up and what you know the passing of infection perhaps around the table
in the restaurant
I mean I think if um if the government and the scientists feel that it
is truly safe then I’m not worried about that at all I mean I think I think I can't overemphasize um how damaging
it is the opening and closing that we've gone through and what about the
position of uh staff and staff
recruitment well I mean I mean the
industry is in a sort of catastrophic situation I mean in terms
of recruitment and I think that's a
mixture of the pandemic and Brexit you know it was the sort of perfect storm but
I think if you speak to anyone in the industry at the moment everybody is
struggling people don't want to come
back to restaurants or to work in restaurants I
think I think the industry has been
so damaged and decimated over this kind of
14 months and I think people just
have no faith in coming back to work uh so I think we've got a really long way to
um to kind of rebuild our kind of industry um anyway I think it's going to take
uh more you know a couple of years it's interesting you say people haven't got
faith I’m not interested in coming back to work I suppose in a way that's not limited
to the hospitality sector that's going to be a change in mindset across industry
and commerce um yeah I think it is I mean i think it's particularly different I’m
difficult when you've been in an in an industry that completely depends on
face-to-face contact as like service industries so we during the lockdowns we
really couldn't do anything um you couldn't kind of you could adapt a little
bit maybe do with some online shop or but actually to run it to run the business as we did before it
was completely impossible and so I think that people have genuinely lost faith
in coming back
to the industry and I think they're
very wary not knowing if there will be another lockdown
um and I think we were open six
weeks last year after march the 17th so uh yeah I think it's just um it's a
very difficult time for us whatever happens we open up on the 21st of
June I think we've still got a long road ahead well I’m sure neither of our
other guests cannot say cassis you know categorically whether there would be
another lockdown but mark Wahlberg is your view that no matter what whether.
We come out in the 21st or the 28ththere
won't be another lockdown well look we're all desperate to get things opened up
as completely as we can and the issue with the science at the
moment is that we face quite a lot
of uncertainty in the data and for policy makers to make the best decisions
they need the best data and if we are not going to yoyo back and
forwards with restrictions then it
is better just not to try and guess or to have instincts but to use the data Robert
ding well um it is not over till it's over and you know of course today the
letter and the telegraph from different organizations who um amongst them saying
that unless there is a
redistribution of vaccines to have a
global that proper vaccination program we can't
have certainty we will not have
certainty into the future is that your view well i think we'll have quite a
high degree of certainty I would certainly agree with some mark about the uh
the need to improve the data that we have but I think we need to recognize that
you know there have been trillions of replication events of the virus out of
which we've seen four variants of
concern arise all of which are
converged on the same handful of genes and the same small area of the spike
protein on the virus I think we have to ask ourselves what's the likelihood
of a more damaging variant appearing
from the uh the current levels of circulation
and that that I think is not a
strong probability um and I think we have to recognize
that the vaccines protect the people
who get them especially the two doses are really
important the waiting for the
immunity to develop fully that's important recognizing that there are better vaccines
in the pipeline with broad amounts of action recognizing in fact with a certain
level of infection in the community may actually be desirable in terms of the booster effects
and the broader reaction that you
that you get from natural infection overlaid on the degree of protection that
the vaccines offer well just finally sky do you think this element this double
vaccination would will make a very big difference both to your staff and to
customers who
are coming do you think that would give
a degree of certainty I mean I think there's definitely a huge willingness for
the general public I think we've all seen it wanting to come
out I think I don't think um I don't
think the facts I don't think the vax double vaccination will
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