Coronavirus infections have stopped falling for the first time in months due to Brits starting to meet up again.
Senior scientists advising ministers are convinced new infections are “flat, maybe up a bit” in recent weeks and are calling on Brits not to assume “it’s party time”.
They remain at around 1,000 new confirmed cases a day as newly released Sage papers suggest ministers may agree this is an “acceptable incidence” level.
Scientists on the Independent Sage group announced that staying at current levels would lead to an extra 30,000 deaths.
It comes as the Government is about to initiate a major further lifting of lockdown measures reopening pubs and allowing larger groups to meet up.
A senior Government scientific adviser said: “This is not party time, this is time to go very carefully with these new release of measures.”
He added: “Determining acceptable incidence is a matter for Government.”
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) surveillance study estimated on Thursday that new infections were steady at more than 3,000 a day in the last fortnight for which data is available. They had been falling since April.
However this was contradicted by separate figures published by the Government that cases were still falling at between 2% and 4% a day.
The uncertainty came on a day images were taken around the country of packed beaches and violent street gatherings.
The Government adviser said: “It’s quite possible this is a true flattening and it might be down to increased contacts.”
Looking at the number of confirmed cases following a positive test, there are around 1,000 new cases a day.
More papers were released by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) on Friday including a draft note dated May 20.
It recommended: “Decreasing daily incidence of symptomatic cases in all regions across the UK until the target acceptable incidence is reached, then incidence kept below that target.
“This target is yet to be specified and needs to be spelt out. We suggest 1,000 new symptomatic swab +ve cases per day in the UK.”
It then added that this acceptable level would be “policy decision”.
It comes after latest daily deaths of people after testing positive were at 149 on Thursday. This took the official UK death toll to 43,230.
The Independent Sage group of scientists yesterday(FRI) told an online media briefing yesterday Britain was lifting lockdown too soon and could follow the US in triggering a huge new spike.
Prof Christina Pagel, of University College London, said: “New daily infections have stopped their downward trend and have been level for the last few weeks.
“I think Chris Whitty said recently that he was expecting this kind of level to carry on for about another nine months in to next year.
“If we carry on with 100 to 150 deaths a day that’s over 30,000 deaths.
“I think we really, really need to keep that downward trend.”
It also estimated that NHS Test and Trace is only reaching a third of symptomatic Covid-19 cases and obtaining details of contacts.
Lifting lockdown in the US without effective infection control and contact tracing has seen new cases hit an all-time high of 40,000.
It comes as new research suggests the proportion of Covid-19 patients in hospital who are dying is falling.
Findings from hospitals in England by Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine suggests medics may be getting better at treating patients.
On April 2, at the height of the epidemic, there were 644 deaths in 10,737 people in hospital with Covid - giving a 6% death rate.
But by June 15 this had fallen to 1.5% with 50 deaths out of 3,270 people in hospital.
The paper concluded: “Further research is warranted to understand why the hospital death rate has declined so markedly over the past eight weeks.”
