An expert has warned that research suggests the current national lockdown in England is not working.
Steven Riley, professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London, said the interim findings of the college’s React study show that the prevalence of infection increased between January 6 and 15.
Speaking to Times Radio, he said: “It’s long enough that, were the lockdown working effectively, we would certainly have hoped to have seen a decline.”
He said data from previous lockdowns did show a decline, adding that current research “certainly doesn’t support the conclusion that lockdown is working”.
Prof Riley, said experts working on the college’s React study are looking at whether current lockdown measures are enough to tackle the more transmissible variant of Covid-19.
He said both people’s behaviour and the transmissibility of the virus are contributing to the patterns of rising infections.
He added that he is “extremely concerned” about high infection rates in community transmissions, and that the number of people being treated in hospital is “astronomically high”.
But Prof Riley said there is “overwhelming” evidence that restricting social contact brings infections down.
He warned that if people’s behaviour in the current national lockdown in England stays the same, infections could continue to rise.
Asked what he would say to lockdown naysayers, he told Times Radio: “People changing their physical mixing directly affects the way that the virus transmits.
“The exact timing of when physical mixing changes with respect to lockdown is difficult to look at precisely but, if we look back to the first lockdown, we saw the most dramatic change in people’s behaviour that I think we ever recorded.
“And the observed decline in infections that was linked to that change in behaviour is, in my view, scientific evidence that the behaviour and the transmission it is linked to is absolutely overwhelming.”
On what he expects would happen in the current lockdown, he said: “We would expect a similar plateau, a very gradual increase (of infections), if behaviour stays the same and, if our interpretation is correct, if what we are seeing is kind of the result of the post-Christmas period behaviour.”
