They were images that seemed to define a hot, febrile, and dangerous summer: massed ranks of daytrippers swamping Britain’s beaches, making the most of the June sunshine after months of restrictions – and, some front pages suggested, creating an appalling risk of coronavirus infection.
Eight months later, the headlines tell a different story: there was no real danger at all.
According to Prof Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at Edinburgh University who sits on the government’s SPI-M committee, the chance of a super-spreader event among the crowds that turned up from Bournemouth to Southend was minimal in theory – and nonexistent in practice.
“Over the summer we were treated to all this on the television news, pictures of crowded beaches, and there was an outcry about this,” he told MPs. “There were no outbreaks linked to public beaches. There’s never been a Covid-19 outbreak linked to a beach, ever, anywhere in the world, to the best of my knowledge.”
If that version of events seems at odds with stern warnings from the health secretary, Matt Hancock, that outdoor exercise could be banned, and an accusation that sunbathers were putting lives at risk, it is wholly consistent with the scientific evidence, other experts agree.
“We have known for some time that only about 10% of transmission events are linked to outdoor activities,” said Dr Müge Çevik, a lecturer in infectious diseases and medical virology at the University of St Andrews.
“Even those events generally involve either prolonged close contact or a mixture of indoor and outdoor time. We had a lot of existing knowledge even when the pandemic began about respiratory viruses and how they transmit in general, and everything directs us to the conditions in people’s homes and workplaces.”
Nobody disputes that there were some possible knock-on risks during the heatwave, on crowded trains or overused toilets – and the traffic jams and litter the crowds brought had a very real effect on local residents’ quality of life.
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