https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...n-course-to-reduce-total-death-rate-3gn7hfjzk
Know the below is just a forecast but the UK may have slammed on the brakes early enough to keep deaths within an "acceptable" 5700.
Spain forecast to have most deaths in Europe at 46,000 and Italy at 28,000 - hope it is lower than these numbers.
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Coronavirus: Lockdown ‘is on course to reduce total death rate’
Tom Whipple, Science Editor |
Kat Lay, Health Correspondent
Saturday March 28 2020, 12.01am, The Times
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Statisticians believe the lockdown is being successful in reducing the impact of the coronavirus
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
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Britain is on course for an estimated 5,700 deaths from
coronavirus, far lower than originally predicted, experts believe.
The country will avoid the 260,000 fatalities once feared if it keeps on the same path seen in China, statisticians at Imperial College London have calculated.
They emphasised that this did not imply that the fears of mass deaths were alarmist, but that the government strategy was working. “Our work shows that social distancing is working against Covid-19 as an effective parachute across multiple countries,” Tom Pike, of Imperial College, said. “That’s no reason for us to cut away our parachutes when we’re still way above the ground.”
This month Neil Ferguson, Professor Pike’s colleague at Imperial, presented a modelling analysis that suggested coronavirus would kill 260,000 people if Britain maintained its previous policy of less restrictive interventions, or 510,000 if left unchecked. That paper led to a change in strategy that included the closure of schools and nationwide social distancing. In the winter of 2017-18 26,000 people died from seasonal flu.
When presenting the analysis, Professor Ferguson said that he would consider it a success if the new strategy managed to keep deaths under 20,000.
The new paper, which incorporates evidence from the effects of social distancing in China and assumes that Britain will follow a similar path, suggests this will be achieved. It estimates that at its peak Britain will experience more than 250 deaths a day, far fewer than the 1,300 a day expected in Italy. The scientists’ best guess for the total number of deaths is 5,700 in Britain, compared with fewer than 4,000 in China. They expect 28,000 deaths in Italy and that this will be overtaken by Spain, which on its present trajectory could suffer 46,000.
The analysis relies on the disease spreading in a similar way to that seen in China. Professor Pike said that despite differences in culture and response, most countries had matched China’s course. “Although there are undoubtedly data issues in the details, the similarity in trajectories of Italy and China suggest that overall the numbers are likely representative,” he said.
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Since the severity of measures deployed by different countries has varied, this implied that there was a threshold of social distancing that needed to be crossed to suppress the disease. Once it was crossed more draconian restrictions were unnecessary. This might help countries to plan for the phased lifting of measures expected to take place over the summer.
Early data is already quantifying the behavioural changes instituted by social distancing in Britain. Data from a Public Health England scheme monitoring a network of A&E departments found that daily attendances had fallen from 25,000 to 17,000. While some may have stayed away out of fears of catching coronavirus, there is evidence that others are avoiding hospitals for non-essential problems and taking better care of themselves. A recent poll by Asthma UK found that those with the condition reported paying closer attention to how they managed it.
Professor Ferguson was not involved in the coronavirus research, which was published before peer review on the preprint server Medrxiv. Last week he gave evidence to parliament and said then that he expected there to be far fewer deaths than feared. He later emphasised that the estimates were not an indication that Britain had overreacted to the virus but rather a judgment that the reaction was working. “If anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought,” he said."
