UK facing 'perfect storm' after coronavirus rules eased over summer, top scientist says

The expert whose advice led to the Government ordering the lockdown in March has said new restrictions will be needed “sooner rather than later” if the UK is to prevent the disease surging again.

Professor Neil Ferguson said the country was facing a “perfect storm” following the easing of controls over the summer.

“Right now we are at about the levels of infection we were seeing in this country in late February,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“If we leave it another two to four weeks we will be back at levels we were seeing more like mid-March. That’s clearly going to cause deaths because people will be hospitalised.

“I think some additional measures are likely to be needed sooner rather than later.”

He added: “We have in some sense a perfect storm right now of people, as they have been told to, getting back to normal – schools reopening, a surge in cases so therefore the testing system is under strain.

“So unfortunately we do have to roll the relaxation of measures back a little bit and get contacts down in the population.”

It comes as ministers are considering tough new restrictions as Boris Johnson said the long-feared the second wave of the pandemic had arrived in the UK .

With new cases of the disease in England estimated to have doubled over the past week, the Prime Minister said they were keeping “everything under review”.

The Government is thought to be looking at a temporary two-week “circuit break”, with new controls across England in an attempt to break the chain of transmission and prevent a new spike in the disease.

Speaking on Saturday, Professor Ferguson said the Government needs to develop a set of “sustainable” coronavirus restrictions if it wants to avoid repeated lockdowns.

“You can lock down and then completely relax and then lock down again,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“My own view is at the moment a temporary lockdown – it wouldn’t be like it was in March, it would be less restrictive than that – would pull down infection numbers to allow the testing system to cope a bit better.

“But I think actually what we want is to have a set of sustainable measures through until we have a vaccine, not go through this cycle again.”

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