The Boris Johnson government on Sunday insisted it is not yet safe to ease the lockdown, amidst intense criticism for allegedly not responding quickly enough in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which may have led to thousands of deaths.
The UK-wide death toll in hospitals mounted to 16,060 (day rise of 596), and 120,067 cases (day rise of 5,850). Reports from care homes and charity organisations say thousands have died outside hospitals that are not reflected in the daily hospital figures.
Michael Gove, senior cabinet minister, rejected several reports in the Sunday press alleging that Johnson did not attend five emergency meetings related to the pandemic, and that ministers were slow in responding adequately despite scientific evidence of its seriousness.
There have been demands that as in other countries, the UK should ease some restrictions as part of an ‘exit plan’, but Gove said the government was taking “a deliberately cautious and measured approach guided by the science”.
He said: “When we have the information, when we have the data that allows us confidently to relax those restrictions we will do so, but that data, that information, is not yet in place,” adding that there is no certainty when a vaccine for the virus would be available.
Sarah Gilbert, who is leading a team developing a vaccine at Oxford University, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that they hoped to start clinical trials towards the end of next week but nobody could be sure it was possible “to find a workable vaccine”.
{{/usCountry}}Sarah Gilbert, who is leading a team developing a vaccine at Oxford University, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that they hoped to start clinical trials towards the end of next week but nobody could be sure it was possible “to find a workable vaccine”.
{{/usCountry}}She said they would need government support to accelerate manufacturing because the UK currently does not have the facilities to make the vaccine on a large scale.
Jeremy Farrar, who is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told Sunday television that the UK may be past the peak of the ‘first wave’ of the virus, but cautioned against easing the lockdown.
“If we were to release those lockdowns too soon whilst the infection rates are still high … then the epidemic would come back again, it would come back very quickly. It would rebound within a few weeks or a couple of months.”
On vaccine development, he said: “It’s not a given that we will make a vaccine. If we did have a vaccine, let’s say late in 2020 or into 2021, we would then need to manufacture it in billions of doses and make those billions of doses available to the world”.
“So just having a vaccine that is safe and effective, proven, is not enough. If there is any country vulnerable, if there is any country where there is still transmission of this virus, then in fact every country is vulnerable.
“I hope we would have a vaccine towards the end of this year – but that’s a vaccine in a vial, it’s a vaccine that we believe to be safe, a vaccine we think might be effective. That’s not having a vaccine for the world.”