A20 EZ rE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020
The coronavirus outbreak
was done by governments and
individuals and the pandemic re-
mained uncontrolled, 510,00 0
would die in Britain and 2.2 mil-
lion in the United States over the
course of the outbreak.
These kinds of numbers are
deeply concerning for countries
with top-drawer health-care sys-
tems. They are terrifying for less-
developed countries, global
health experts say.
If Britain and the United States
pursued more-ambitious mea-
sures to mitigate the spread of the
coronavirus, to slow but not nec-
essarily stop the epidemic over t he
coming few months, they could
reduce mortality by half, to
260,000 people in the United
Kingdom and 1.1 million in the
United S tates.
finally, if the British govern-
ment quickly went all-out to sup-
press viral spread — aiming to
reverse epidemic growth and re-
duce the case load to a low level —
then the number of dead in the
country could drop to below
20,000. To do this, the researchers
said, Britain would have to en-
force social distancing for the en-
tire population, isolate all cases,
demand quarantines of entire
households where anyone is sick,
and close all schools and universi-
ties — and do this not for weeks
but for 12 to 18 months, until a
vaccine is available.
“We might be living in a very
different world for a year o r more,”
ferguson told reporters.
The modelers did not give n um-
bers for the United States for the
most intense suppression efforts.
The researchers reminded gov-
ernments that these forecasts are
based on current observed trends
report from A
Model
prompts
policy
U-turn
nurses have school-age children,
the Guardian newspaper report-
ed.
In their forecast, the modelers
envision that strict measures over
the coming months will occasion-
ally be loosened, but as soon as
they are, viral spread could come
roaring back.
“The major challenge of sup-
pression is that this type of inten-
sive intervention package... will
need to be maintained until a
vaccine becomes available (poten-
tially 18 months or more), given
that we predict that transmission
will quickly rebound if interven-
tions are relaxed,” the study con-
cludes.
“Intermittent social distancing
— triggered by trends in disease
surveillance — may allow inter-
ventions to be relaxed t emporarily
in relatively short time windows,
but measures will need to be rein-
troduced if or when case n umbers
rebound,” the research team said.
[email protected]10 people, e ating in restaurants or
taking nonessential trips — his
most significant push yet to com-
bat a viral outbreak.
At a news conference monday
at the White House, Birx said her
group has been working with
modelers around the globe, in-
cluding in Britain.
“So, we had new information
coming out from a model, and
what had the biggest i mpact in the
model is social distancing, small
groups, not going in public in
large groups. But the most impor-
tant t hing was if one person in the
household became infected, the
whole household self-quaran-
tined for 14 days. Because that
stops 100 percent o f the transmis-
sion o utside o f the household,” s he
said.
To suppress spread in Britain,
widespread school and university
closings might also be necessary,
though ferguson worried about
its impact on staffing at NHS hos-
pitals, where as many as a third ofation.”
roy Anderson, an infectious
disease specialist at Imperial Col-
lege, who was not a part of the
study, said Britain probably had
much more to do. “I don’t know if
these measures are enough yet,”
he said. “A nd I wish we had done
them last week.”
If Britain had continued on the
go-slow, step-by-step course that
it set just days ago, the Imperial
College modeling envisioned hun-
dreds of thousands of deaths and a
tidal wave of cases that would
overwhelm the National Health
Service and its hospitals. There
are currently 7,000 ventilators
available for all of England, the
largest nation within the United
Kingdom, with a population of
56 million.
The British forecast also influ-
enced thinking at the White
House. on monday evening in
Washington, President Trump
said that Americans should avoid
gathering in groups of more thansuffer from underlying medical
conditions. The measures are still
voluntary, but Johnson warned
that his government had the pow-er to make them mandatory.
Johnson said that healthy and
asymptomatic Britons should
avoid pubs, clubs and theaters. In
London, the bars were still open
monday. most schools, museums
and restaurants w ere, t oo. But t he
prime minister said closing
schools was “under consider-in China, South Korea, Britain a nd
Italy but that much remains un-
known about the virus.
The Imperial College report,
which was shared with t he British
government over the weekend
ahead of its official release mon-
day, was responsible in large part
for Johnson’s turnaround deci-
sion to begin rolling out what 10
Downing Street described as life-
altering, “drastic” measures to
control the spread of the novel
coronavirus, aides said.
Johnson said the virus “would
overwhelm any health system in
the world” i f quarantines and lim-
its on social contact are not taken.
“A lthough the measures we have
already announced are extreme,
we may have to go further in the
coming days,” the prime minister
said Tuesday.
Johnson urged his fellow citi-
zens to immediately start to avoid
“all nonessential contact with oth-
ers,” w ork f rom home and self-iso-
late now if they are elderly orrICHArD PoHlE/Pool/EPA-EFE/SHUttErStoCK
From left, chief British medical officer Chris Whitty, prime Minister Boris Johnson and chief scientific officer patrick Vallanc address reporters Monday in London.
Afterward, Johnson received an expert briefing suggesting that coronavirus-related fatalities could top a half-million in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States.“We might be living in a
very different world for
a year or more.”
Neil Ferguson,Imperial College londonA Tr usted Name Since 1945It’s often the things you don’tsee that matter the most.A Trusted Name Since 1945It’s often the things you don’tsee that matter the most.- Protective underlayment
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