On Thursday, a group of researchers and health experts sounded the alarm about Britain’s plan for a full reopening from 19 July. In an open letter published in the renowned journal The Lancet they highlight five main concerns and call for the postponement of the reopening until everyone – including young people – has been offered a vaccine.
“Since vaccination will quickly achieve the same goal of population immunity without exposing itself to these major risk factors, we believe that any strategy that tolerates high infection rates is to be considered both unethical and illogical,” writes lead author Deepti Gurdasani in it. open the letter which more than 100 researchers have expressed their support for.
“The UK needs to reconsider its current strategy and take immediate action to protect the population, including children. We believe that the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and will call for the postponement of the plan to repeal all measures from 19 July.
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Urgent summit
The editor-in-chief of The Lancet, Richard Horton, has announced that he will speak at an urgent summit on Thursday, which is organized by the authors behind the open letter. You can follow the press conference about this on Dagbladet TV from 11 am.
It was on July 5 that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson announced that they would lift all coronary restrictions and reopen society from July 19. Among other things, this means that the bandage requirement, the meter rule and the order for a home office disappear. Johnson also stated that the government will make a final assessment related to the infection situation and reopening on July 12.
At present, 86.4 per cent of the adult population in the UK has received the first dose of the corona vaccine, while 64.6 per cent of the adult population has received two doses, according to Public Health England (PHE).
As a result of the delta variant, the United Kingdom is experiencing a sharp increase in the number of new cases of infection. According to PHE, more than 32,000 new cases of infection were registered in the last 24 hours, while at the beginning of May they registered 2,000 new cases daily. At its worst, Britain registered over 80,000 new cases in one day.
At the same time as the number of new cases of infection increases sharply, the number of new ones increases covid-19 admissions and deaths themselves relatively low.
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Main concerns
The lead author of the open letter, Deepti Gurdasani, is an epidemiologist and lecturer in machine learning at Queens Mary University of London. She highlights the following five main concerns:
1. Uncontrolled spread of infection will particularly affect unvaccinated children and young people who have already been severely affected by the pandemic.
2. A large spread of infection in schools and among children will have major consequences related to education.
The reopening strategy will facilitate the emergence of new virus variants against which the vaccines have a reduced effect.
4. The strategy will particularly affect the health service and health personnel who are still exhausted after dealing with previous waves of infection.
5. The strategy will reinforce inequalities in society as covid-19 hits the most vulnerable people disproportionately hard.
The researchers believe that the UK must wait with further reopening until all adults and young people have been offered a vaccine. They also believe that the government must wait until the authorities have implemented measures to prevent the spread of infection in schools, and point in particular to improvements to the ventilation systems. Until this has happened, the researchers believe that the UK should retain requirements for the use of indoor sanitary napkins and the TISK system.
“This will ensure that everyone is protected, and makes it much less likely that further measures or closures will be needed in the autumn,” Gurdasani writes.
