England went into a third lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic, and it doesn’t seem to be creating any decline in COVID-19 cases, Reuters reports.
What’s going on?
Researchers warned Thursday that the highly transmissible COVID-19 variant continues to work its way through the country, which has seen little decline in recent days despite a lockdown, according to Reuters.
- In fact, the researchers said there was “no evidence of decline” in the first 10 days of newly-added restrictions in England.
Key quote
- “The number of COVID-19 in-patients (in hospital) is extremely high at the moment, and we can’t expect that to drop unless we can achieve lower levels of prevalence,” said Steven Riley, a professor of infectious disease dynamics, according to Reuters. “The fact that (prevalence) is not going down has potentially serious consequences.”
Context
Back at the beginning of January, England announced it would go into a new national COVID-19 lockdown to deal with the fast-spreading COVID-19 variant originally discovered in the United Kingdom, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- Everyone in England was advised to stay home unless they were permitted to leave.
- People could leave their homes for “essential medical needs, food shopping, exercise and work for those who cannot do so from home,” according to BBC News.
So what next?
Paul Elliott, an expert in epidemiology and public health medicine and director of the REACT program, told Reuters that people need to “double down on public health measures.”
- “Wear face covers, keep your distance and wash your hands,” Elliott said. “There will be continued pressure until we can get the prevalence down.”