Coronavirus ‘could get worse in next few weeks’, UK’s top scientist warns

Coronavirus is expected to get worse over the next couple of weeks, the UK’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has said.

After that, cases will begin to stagnate before they decrease, he told a Downing Street press briefing.

Making a presentation on the latest data, Sir Patrick said that at the moment, the UK is seeing around 1,000 new cases of Covid-19 a day. But, he said that data does not suggest that we are experiencing a fast acceleration of cases, suggesting social distancing measures are working.

Sir Patrick said that ‘we’re tracking roughly along the same path as France’ and behind Italy in terms of deaths of patients who have contracted the virus.

He said he expects the pattern to continue over the next two to three weeks, with the number likely to begin to decrease after that.

Sir Patrick said: ‘The measures are in place, they are making a difference, they are decreasing the contact which is so important to spread the disease and we’re doing a good job at cutting that down.

‘What you can see is there’s been an increase in the number of cases since the middle of March through to today. We expect that measures that are in place that cause that social distancing, the stay at home message will be reducing the number of cases of transmission in the community and decreasing the number of cases overall.

‘We would expect this, in turn, to decrease the number of people needing admission to hospital.’

Sir Patrick said it was too early to say when social distancing would end.

Pointing to a graph, he said the total number of people admitted to hospital since the middle of March is now 8,000 people, with the number rising by the same amount each day.

He said: ‘That shows that it’s going up not in an increasing amount but in a constant amount which may suggest that we’re already beginning to see some effect through [social distancing]’.

He said around half the admissions were in London, but that there are cases everywhere so people across the country should abide by the stay at home message.