UK scientist: Week earlier lockdown could have halved deaths

A scientist whose modeling helped set Britain’s coronavirus strategy said Tuesday that country’s death toll could have been cut in half if lockdown h been introduced a week earlier.

Britain has second-highest confirmed death toll in world from COVID-19, at more than 41,000. Including cases where coronavirus was suspected but t confirmed by a test, total is over 50,000.

Neil Ferguson, professor of mamatical biology at Imperial College London, told lawmakers that when key decisions were being me in March, scientists underestimated how widely virus h spre in U.K.

He told Parliament’s Science and Techlogy Committee that “ epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced,” rar than five to six days estimated at time.

Ferguson said that “h we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced final death toll by at least a half.”

He also said death toll would have been lower if residents of nursing homes h been shielded from infection, something that didn’t happen.

Ferguson developed models that predicted hundreds of thousands would die unless U.K. imposed drastic restrictions to slow spre of coronavirus.

On March 16, Ferguson and colleagues published a paper suggesting that even with some social distancing measures, U.K. could see 250,000 virus-related deaths and United States a death toll of about 1 million. Ferguson predicted those figures could more than double in both countries in a worst-case scenario.

following day, Prime Minister Boris Johnson vised Britons to work from home, if possible, and to avoid unnecessary social garings. A nationwide lockdown followed on March 23, barring people from visiting friends and family that y don’t live with.

Johnson’s Conservative government is facing strong criticism for allegedly being slow to act against virus. government says it followed vice it was given at time by scientific visers.

Ferguson said measures taken in March were warranted “given what we knew about this virus n in terms of its transmission and fatality.”