Relaxing Covid rules too early likely to bring huge death toll, UK scientists say

Relaxing all restrictions by the end of April, a scenario demanded by some Tory MPs, could lead to a massive fourth wave of infections higher than the January peak and risk almost doubling the UK’s death toll, government documents have revealed.

Lockdown-sceptic Tories have campaigned for the full lifting of all restrictions by the end of April. More than 60 MPs from the Covid Recovery Group wrote to Johnson calling on him to commit to a complete end to controls by 30 April.

The government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) released documents on Monday including five different models for easing lockdown.

They suggest that under even the most optimistic scenarios modelled by teams at Imperial College London and Warwick University, tens of thousands more people can be expected to die from Covid because vaccines will not provide complete protection against the disease, and not everyone will have the jabs.

The five scenarios differed in the speed at which restrictions were lifted, roughly between two and five months, with baseline measures such as mask wearing and test and trace in place at the end. All scenarios led to a resurgence of cases because so many vulnerable people remained unprotected, even with high vaccine coverage.

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Scenario 1 would mean ending restrictions by 26 April, in line with demands of Tory MPs, with others seeing a progressively more cautious timetable.

The modelling of scenario 1 says that “unless vaccine efficacy is significantly better than assumed here, it is highly likely that hospital occupancy would be higher than that seen in January 2021, if all restrictions are lifted by the start of May”.

It says under scenario 1, even under the most optimistic modelling, there would be “another wave comparable in size to January 2021, resulting in a further 62,000 to 107,000 deaths in England”.

The document warns that a fourth wave would occur even under the optimistic vaccine rollout scenario of 4m doses per week from the end of March 2021.

The outlook is far brighter if restrictions are lifted with case rates low, vaccination rates high, and changes are made gradually.

However, even under the most optimistic vaccine scenario and with cautious unlocking, models suggest there could be tens of thousands of additional Covid-related deaths by next summer.

In Warwick’s submission, the scientists say that “relaxing too quickly (scenario 1) will result in peak hospital occupancy considerably higher than the current wave and substantial additional deaths.

“This holds regardless of vaccine efficacy, rollout, adherence to baseline NPIs [non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as testing and isolating positive cases, hand-washing and mask-wearing], and impact of seasonality.”

The government has said it hopes to vaccinate all priority groups by 15 April – which will include all over-50s and vulnerable adults – and all adults in the UK by 31 July.