On Monday, March 16, the death toll from the coronavirus in
the UK climbed to 55. Scientists have warned that the novel coronavirus will
kill about 250,000 people in the UK unless more draconian measures are adopted
by the government, especially putting the whole of Britain on lockdown. The
warning report written by the Imperial College said: "In the most
effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively
short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of
the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU (intensive care
unit) beds would be exceeded by at least eight-fold under the more optimistic
scenario for critical care requirements that we examined.
"In addition, even if all patients were able to be
treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB,
and 1.1 to 1.2 million in the US."
The only alternative proposed by the Imperial College
report was to move to a policy of total “suppression” involving the social
distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household
quarantine of family members. It however said it was "not certain at
all" that the strategy would work in the long term.
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