Prof Chris Whitty says UK is “not out of the woods yet” and people should act with caution as Covid restrictions in England end. England’s chief medical officer warned that Covid hospitalisations were doubling every three weeks and could hit “scary numbers” in future.
Prof Whitty told an online seminar hosted by the Science Museum that the situation could become very dangerous for individual hospitals. He doesn’t think they should underestimate the fact that they could get into trouble again surprisingly fast. Because the numbers in hospital are low now, that does not mean the numbers will be low in hospital in five, six, seven, eight weeks time.
He added that they still got 2,000 people in hospital and that number is increasing. If they double from 2,000 to 4,000 from 4,000 to 8,000, 8,000 and so on it doesn’t take many doubling times until they are in very, very large numbers.
While Prof Whitty cautioned, he added that they are in much better shape due to the vaccine programme, and drugs, and a variety of other things.
Also, this has a long way to run in the UK, and it has even further to run globally.
