Would be ‘very surprising’ if Britain evades coronavirus SECOND WAVE, UK govt medical adviser warns
A scientific adviser to the UK government has given a stark warning to Britons, saying they’re not out of the woods with regards to the deadly Covid-19 disease, and claiming he’d be “very surprised if we avoided a second wave.”
John Bell – a professor of medicine at Oxford University and a member of the government’s coronavirus vaccine taskforce – told the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on Monday, that the “real question” is not if, but how widespread a renewed flare-up of Covid-19 will be.
His sobering remarks come as the UK recorded its second lowest number (38) of Covid-19 deaths since the lockdown began on March 23. The decline in new infections and fatalities has prompted PM Boris Johnson’s administration to ease lockdown restrictions, with non-essential shops reopening their doors on Monday morning.
The professor – an immunologist and geneticist – also suggested that any attempts to understand whether people who had contracted the disease have acquired any immunity, would have to be made via testing during a “second wave.”
The committee also heard from Mauro Giacca – a professor of Cardiovascular Sciences at King’s College London – who revealed the chilling effect of Covid-19 on human organs, saying it leaves people’s lungs unrecognizable.
Giacca told the committee: “What you find in the lungs of people who have stayed with the disease for more than a month before dying is something completely different from normal pneumonia, influenza or the Sars virus.”
The UK’s death toll sits at 41,736 – the third highest in the world – behind the USA and Brazil. Many critics of the UK government’s strategy say they were too ill-prepared for a pandemic, too slow to lock down society, had fundamental failures around testing, tracking and tracing, and experienced issues with personal protective equipment (PPE).
His sobering remarks come as the UK recorded its second lowest number (38) of Covid-19 deaths since the lockdown began on March 23. The decline in new infections and fatalities has prompted PM Boris Johnson’s administration to ease lockdown restrictions, with non-essential shops reopening their doors on Monday morning.
The professor – an immunologist and geneticist – also suggested that any attempts to understand whether people who had contracted the disease have acquired any immunity, would have to be made via testing during a “second wave.”
The committee also heard from Mauro Giacca – a professor of Cardiovascular Sciences at King’s College London – who revealed the chilling effect of Covid-19 on human organs, saying it leaves people’s lungs unrecognizable.
Giacca told the committee: “What you find in the lungs of people who have stayed with the disease for more than a month before dying is something completely different from normal pneumonia, influenza or the Sars virus.”
The UK’s death toll sits at 41,736 – the third highest in the world – behind the USA and Brazil. Many critics of the UK government’s strategy say they were too ill-prepared for a pandemic, too slow to lock down society, had fundamental failures around testing, tracking and tracing, and experienced issues with personal protective equipment (PPE).