Considering the alarming situation caused by the Novel Coronavirus, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced on Monday, March 16 that people should stop socialising, avoid travelling and stay in isolation, if a family member becomes ill. Millions of UK residents are now working from home.
There are several companies and researchers who are in the process of developing a vaccine or drug to cure the COVID-19, which has killed over 7,100 people globally. But a report by Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team showed that the 260,000 people could have died if the UK hadn't changed its combating strategy by tightening rules.
UK combating COVID-19
After seeing the condition in Italy which is now the second country after China with most infection and death cases, British officials released the need for re-structuring the safety measures.
The UK officials are now urging manufacturers to help out by building intensive care ventilators if they can plug NHS shortfall during emergency situation, but Imperial College research showed that the hospitals in UK will be overwhelmed regardless of these measures. It added that a dramatic spike in Novel Coronavirus cases is unavoidable and most strict quarantine measures would not be helpful to overload NHS intensive care units.
The government was earlier criticized for not taking stricter action despite an alarming situation. The ministry was shocked to know that as per the report, UK will suffer more deaths than the current modeling-based prediction.
The terrifying report by Imperial College
A team of virus, disease and public health experts at the Imperial College London University, including Professor Neil Ferguson, have released this report. Prof Ferguson has revealed that the team of researchers had been advising the UK government and this time, put the information on public domain. In the report they explained that the virus cannot be stopped.
While talking on BBC Radio 4, Professor Ferguson said:
"Unfortunately, we've really concluded, based on the mortality this virus causes and the experiences around the world... that it is not possible to do anything other than adopt the current strategy yesterday of suppressing transmission.
"No country in the world this far has seen an epidemic that large [250,000 deaths], this is an early extrapolation of an early epidemic that was suppressed in China. But we have no reason to believe that's not what would happen if we frankly did nothing, and even if we did all we could to slow, not reverse, the spread, we'd still be looking at a very large number of deaths and the health system being overwhelmed."
In the report, entitled with "Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand," the team of experts concluded that if no action had been taken against the COVID-19 outbreak, then the deadly virus would have claimed 510,000 lives.
The report also revealed that lockdown measures could be brought back if the Novel Coronavirus resurfaces after this epidemic is over, which is worse than anything the world has seen since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
