'Circuit breaker' lockdown won't have impact on overall trajectory of virus, scientist warns
A two-week 'circuit breaker' - where national coronavirus lockdown restrictions are re-imposed - probably wouldn't have "much impact" on the overall trajectory of the virus, a leading professor has warned.
Professor Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia said that when the short, sharp lockdown is over, the increase in infections is likely to resume.
He believes that lockdown will always need to be twice as long as non-lockdown. Two weeks is simply not long enough to undo the current damage, he warned.
And he called for clarity from ministers, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We've certainly seen a lot of confusion and a lot of mixed messages over the past few months and examples of people in authority who don't feel that they need to follow the rules themselves."
Speaking last week, Prof Hunter added: "The problem is that cases decline in lockdown at a much slower rate than cases increase during the period before.
"This can be clearly seen by looking at the graph of case reports by day in the UK. In the 28 days up to the peak in early April, case numbers were doubling about every seven days and more rapidly than that early on.
"In the following 56 days, case numbers were only halving every four weeks, though partly this was because of better availability of testing. So an on-off approach to lockdown is only likely to work if we have at least twice as long in lockdown as out of lockdown."
There is another problem with a two-week lockdown. The lag between cases falling and that showing up in the statistics is around three weeks, so it would be impossible to know whether it was working until it was already over.
