EXIT STRATEGY
What needs to happen for coronavirus lockdown to ease? From R rate and Covid vaccine rollout to hospital admissions
IN ORDER to exit the third national coronavirus lockdown the UK needs to hit a range of targets to lift restrictions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce his roadmap out of lockdown today which will detail what needs to be done so that more sections of society can start to reopen.
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Step one will see kids return to classrooms on March 8 and “ways for people to reunite with loved ones safely” prioritised.
Loved ones are expected to be able to meet outdoors from next month, and the Rule of Six could return by late March.
Pub gardens and outdoor cafes are set to reopen around April 12 to 19.
The rest of restrictions will be eased in May and June with inside mixing and drinking — with the hope of normality by July, when every adult will have been offered a Covid jab first dose.
Regional tiers have been ditched and all of England will begin the phased return to normality.
But Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there will be “weeks between the steps” — so ministers can “watch carefully” the impact of each relaxation of the restrictions.
And the PM will reserve the right to slam the brakes on lifting lockdown if a new variant of the virus emerges.
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But what does the UK need to achieve in order for lockdown to be lifted?
Downing Street has revealed four key tests which will be examined each step of the way:
1. Continued progress with vaccines
So far in the UK over 17.5 million Brits have received a first dose of either the Pfizer/BioNTech jab or the Oxford/AstraZeneca offering with more than 600,000 having received their second.
This is the equivalent of 26.3 per cent of the total UK population, and 33.4 per cent of people aged 18 and over.
The NHS is currently inviting those who are aged between 65 and 69 years old, and NHS England said two-thirds in this group had already been reached.
All over 50s should be reached by mid-April, and every adult by the end of July, it has been pledged.
Those over 40 years old could have their jabs by March if the vaccine drive continues successfully, it was reported last week.
Those who have been jabbed already include the most vulnerable in society as listed by the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation).
But anyone over 70 who has not yet received their jab should contact the NHS to organise inoculation.
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This week, the JCVI is expected to outline how the general population under the age of 50 will be vaccinated.
The announcement has long been anticipated because there have been calls for teachers, police officers and people from ethnic minorities to be prioritised.
Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol and a member of the JCVI, told BBC Breakfast on Sunday: “The strategy from JCVI that’s being provided as advice to the Government is just being finalised at the moment, and then Government will make their decision as to how to do this during the coming days, so I think there’ll be some kind of public announcement around that in the next week or so.”
With the vaccine rollout moving at such pace, it raises hopes of a return to normality, with one Sage expert saying the data looks good enough for an "earlier unlocking".
But experts from Edinburgh University previously warned that relaxing all measures at the end of April – once all over 50s have had their first dose – could still lead to a huge surge in cases.
2. Vaccines effectively reducing hospitalisations and deaths
The main job of widespread vaccination is to prevent people from becoming severely ill from Covid.
There are early hints that this is the case among the elderly who have received their first dose of the vaccine.
People do not have maximum protection against Covid until they have had both doses of the jab - which very few people have.
Professor Dame Angela McLean told MPs last week there are "signs of decreases in death rates".
A study two weeks ago claimed that the jabs are on track to prevent nine out of ten Covid deaths by mid-March.
Experts say it will take longer for hospitalisations to come down because a lot of people admitted are middle aged, and have not had a vaccine dose.
Dame Angela said it's unlikely hospital rates will be affected until all those over 50 years old are jabbed.
3. Infection rates do not risk pressure on the NHS
Protecting the NHS has been the primary goal during the Covid pandemic, and that won't change any time soon.
Although it may seem safe to lift lockdown after the most vulnerable in society are vaccinated, there is still the potential for a third wave, scientists say.
If lockdown was lifted after all the over 50s are jabbed, that still leaves half the population vulnerable to the virus.
This could be enough to drive hospitalisations up and cause more deaths in those in their 40s, 30s and younger.
There are also vulnerable and elderly people who chose not to be vaccinated or the NHS were unable to reach.
And, the vaccines are not 100 per cent effective, meaning there will be some people inoculated who do catch the virus.
Dame Angela told the Science and Technology Committee last week that lifting lockdown too early "while a lot of the most vulnerable are unvaccinated" risks "disaster".
These are factors ministers will have to weigh up in deciding the best approach to lifting restrictions.
They are under pressure from dozens of Tory MPs who say scientists are "moving the goalposts", and there is "no justification" for restrictions beyond May.
4. New variants are not a threat
There are several new variants of Covid in the UK that have been labelled either a "concern" or "under investigation".
This includes the ones from South Africa and Brazil, for which there is surge testing across England to find new cases.
The worry is that a new variant will come along that renders the vaccines useless, putting everyone at risk of disease once again.
At the moment, the vaccines being deployed work against the most dominant strain in the UK - know as the “Kent variant” - but with slightly less effectiveness against other strains.
The Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News on Sunday: "We've got to be vigilant because if one of these new variants doesn't respond to the vaccine as well as the variant that is now the standard variant in the UK - the Kent variant…. then that's obviously a very serious risk for the vaccination programme.
"We're doing a lot of work to find out the impact of the vaccine on these new variants, especially the ones discovered in Brazil and South Africa, because clearly knowing the answer to that question is critical to understanding how much of a risk the new variants pose.
"But the good news is that the actions we're taking right now do appear to be working."
The Government recently launched a four-step strategy to keep on top of new variants.
It included new border controls and quarantine measures to limit the entry of new variants from other countries.
But there is also the possibility of a “home grown” variant in the UK if cases remain too high.
What other key data will the Government consider?
The R rate
The R rate is a measure of the severity of the Covid outbreak.
The crucial value represents the number of people an infected person passes the virus on to.
But it can be suppressed if everyone reduces their contacts - and is one of the key reasons the country has been forced to shutdown.
Scientists say the R rate must be below 1 in order for the outbreak to shrink because this means every Covid patient infects fewer than one other person.
Data published by Sage on Friday revealed that the R rate is now between 0.6 and 0.9 across the UK.
It's the lowest R range seen since the Government first started publishing the figures in May.
Professor Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said the update on the R rate was "more good news".
He said: "Things are definitely moving in the right direction, and fairly fast. But there is still a long way to go.
"Vaccinations will help more and more, but things are nowhere near back to normal yet and won’t be for a long time."
Death rates
It's clear that before lockdown is lifted, death rates will need to fall.
So far in the UK over 120,000 people have died from the virus, according to the Government dashboard, but statistic agencies say it is higher.
Daily deaths peaked in January at over 1,000 a day, which has now come down to about 450 a day.
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While vaccines are being rolled out across the UK, it is not yet crystal clear how effective the jabs have been at reducing deaths and hospitalisations.
More data will be needed to evaluate this which should be available in the coming weeks.
Mr Johnson said the plan to exit lockdown will rely partly on “deaths falling at the pace we would expect as more people are inoculated”.
But he did not clarify how quickly officials expect to see numbers dwindle.
All measures of Covid-19 deaths show the numbers heading in a downwards direction, though they remain around the level recorded when England came out of its second lockdown on December 2.
Hospital admissions
In order for restrictions to be relaxed, pressure needs to be lifted from the NHS.
Last month Covid inpatients peaked at 38,000, which has come down to 21,0000.
And there are now around 2,7000 people on ventilators, down from the 4,000 at the peak in mid-January.
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Despite the drop in figures, all regions continue to report patient numbers well above those seen in May, when Boris Johnson announced the initial easing of the first lockdown.
Leading doctors have said they expect to see the NHS under pressure into the early summer.
Each patient admitted to hospital with Covid is treated for around three weeks - which is far longer than typical respiratory diseases.
Mr Johnson previously said that if the lockdown was lifted too soon, the NHS could come under more pressure.
Government experts have not given a figure as to how many hospital admissions would be acceptable for the government to lift restrictions.
Infection rates
Data from Public Health England (PHE) suggests that infection rates are falling across most of England with just a handful of areas witnessing a rise in infections.
Fewer cases of coronavirus mean fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths.
NHS boss Sir Simon Stevens previously said that infection rates are "fundamentally the driver of deaths".
The impact of the third national lockdown can be seen most strikingly in the steep decline since Christmas of the number of new cases of Covid-19.
Less than 12,000 new cases are being diagnosed each day, compared with a highs of 61,000 at the start of January.
The Government has not stated how low infection rates would need to be for each stage of lockdown lifting.
However in July there were days where under 50 cases a day were being reported.
Sage members are calling for the prevalence of the virus - how many people are infected at any one time - to be at 50,000 before significant easing of restrictions.
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But this figure is currently at 481,300, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Around one in 115 people had the virus in the most recent estimate for the week to February 12, which is 30 per cent lower than the week prior.
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