Hospitalisation numbers in the UK are rising, and need to be watched carefully, an expert has said - but lockdown will be a last resort.
Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (Spi-M), which feeds into Sage, said UK “case numbers are still very, very high”.
He told BBC Breakfast that hospital admissions “are starting to slowly creep up, but certainly are not at the scale that they were back at the start of this year, but of course we do need to keep an eye on this”.
Asked about when restrictions may need to be brought in, he said it is important to look at cases but also hospital admissions and deaths from Covid, which he expects to “creep up” in the coming months.
He said hospital admissions need to be compared not just with last year but also 2019 “to really assess at what points the Government may need to think about potentially reintroducing more restrictions, if we are at risk of being in a situation similar to where we were last year”.
On lockdowns, Dr Tildesley said everyone wants to avoid “closures of workplaces, closures of businesses, and of course going into full lockdown, so these really have to be last-resort measures”.
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