Professor Karol Sikora

How to find a safe way out of the coronavirus lockdown

We are in a big mess, there is no doubt. We’re battling a deadly virus, the Prime Minister is in hospital and the country is in lockdown. A less optimistic person could argue that all is lost.

The constant howling from our media does little to help – portraying death and destruction nightly on our screens is just too harrowing for many to watch. Reporting daily numbers is necessary, but there should be a much greater focus on trends as any schoolboy mathematician will tell you. New infections are levelling off. It is clear that we are at the plateau phase of incidence with the numbers bouncing around a bit. A lot of the day-to-day variation just reflects delays in getting the numbers together for presentation. When the incidence falls significantly, and it will, the deaths will belatedly follow the same downward direction as in those countries further along the pandemic pathway.

People are terrified but hope is the best motivator. We now need a credible exit plan from this lockdown so people have something to believe in. And we need our politicians to push for this; epidemiology is not an exact science, but doctors are good at making decisions without all the data. Let’s publicly discuss a way out. We need to find the door to unlock the lockdown.

Assuming we see the number of infections continue to fall then following this closely will be a drop in hospitalisations and finally a fall in deaths. The crescendo of NHS activity is Easter weekend. The NHS can then begin to breathe a sigh of relief. In two weeks, the numbers could have dramatically improved and the focus will inevitably turn to finding that exit door. This is already starting to happen elsewhere in Europe.

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