Removing Covid restrictions before March would be a disaster in the battle against coronavirus and would risk putting the NHS under enormous pressure if lifted prematurely, a leading epidemiologist has said, The Guardian reports.
Prof John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said Boris Johnson would be very unwise to ease lockdown curbs before the majority of the public has received vaccinations.
Edmunds, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “I think it would be a disaster if we removed restrictions in, say, the end of February when we have gone through this first wave of the vaccination. First of all, vaccines aren’t ever 100% protective, and so even those that have been vaccinated would still be at some risk.
“Secondly, it is only a small fraction of the population who would have been vaccinated, and if you look at the hospitalizations at the moment, about half of them are in the under-70s, and they are not in the first wave to be vaccinated. If we relaxed our restrictions, we would immediately put the NHS under enormous pressure again.”
His comments follow reports in the Daily Telegraph that letters inviting over-70s to book vaccinations could begin arriving as early as next week, with 90% of over-80s in some areas having already been vaccinated.
