Government urged to ‘hold nerve’ over Indian variant and release lockdown as planned

The Government must "hold its nerve" and carry on with the lockdown release because there is little evidence that the Indian Covid variant is causing a major problem, a public health expert has said.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Prof Robert Dingwall, who sits on the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation, said local lockdowns and surge testing would do little to stop the variant.

Although cases of the Indian variant are rising, there is no evidence that the mutated virus is any more deadly.

Data from Public Health England show there have been just four deaths linked to the mutation and it is believed that, while the virus may be spreading quickly in younger, unvaccinated groups, it is not so far causing serious disease.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) met to discuss the variant on Thursday and is expected to make recommendations to the Government this week.

Prof Dingwall said: "The Government needs to hold its nerve rather than allow itself to be pushed to measures that are unnecessary, demoralising and won't work. The evidence just isn't there yet. We have reports from India that vaccinated people, like medical workers, aren't getting the infection.

"Given that it's typically seven days to symptomatic infection, the Indian variant has been around long enough for hotspot communities to be seeing a rise in admissions, but we haven't seen any uptick. We have a rise in reported infections, but that does not seem to be translating into hospitalisations."

Prof Dingwall also questioned whether proposals such as local lockdowns or surge vaccination programmes would be beneficial, but said very localised vaccination programmes may help.

"There is considerable doubt about whether there is any point in surge vaccination because that would not have any impact for three to four weeks, and you massively disrepute the national programme to achieve it," he added.

"And many of the 'hot spots' have been in lockdown for months without much evidence of benefit, probably due to limited compliance. If anything has value, it is probably intensive effort at ward or postcode level, possibly using the flexibility already in the national rollout to offer vaccinations to all adults.

"The problem here is the conflation of transmission with severity and the consequent pressure to be seen to 'do something'. A third of the UK population is now fully vaccinated and almost 60 per cent has one shot, which is giving a higher protection."

Latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that overall infection rates are continuing to fall.

In England, in the week ending May 8, the ONS estimates around 40,800 had an infection or one in 1,340 people, down from one in 1,180 in the previous week.

Sarah Crofts, the head of analytical outputs for the Covid-19 Infection Survey, said: "It's encouraging that infection rates continue to head in the right direction. In England, infections are now below four per cent of the level seen at the start of the year.

"It is really important that we continue to closely monitor infection rates as further lifting of lockdown restrictions take place."

However the King's ZOE symptom tracker app, which has been monitoring infections since the start of the pandemic and tends to be ahead of trends in the ONS data, has found a 65 per cent increase in figures from the previous week.

The team estimates there are currently 2,782 new daily symptomatic cases of Covid in the UK on average, based on swab test data from up to five days ago, compared to 1,685 daily cases a week ago.

Tim Spector OBE, the principal investigator on the ZOE Covid Study app, said: "While the increase in cases this week is likely to be real, the overall numbers are still just a fraction of what they were at the height of the pandemic.

"Increases of this size are to be expected with changes in social behaviour as restriction ease. We are also seeing milder forms of Covid-19 within vaccinated groups and younger people presenting with much less respiratory problems than previously."