Britain’s coronavirus outbreak has been even deadlier than Government scientists’ worst-case scenario, secret papers published today revealed.
SAGE estimated 50,000 people could die by September if compliance with lockdown was low, in a report submitted to ministers on March 29.
But as of today the official Covid-19 death toll already stands at 44,000, but separate government figures show the UK topped the dreaded 50,000 mark a month ago.
Another scientific report presented to ministers warned that easing lockdown without a robust track and trace system would push the reproduction rate above 1.
The paper was handed to Number 10 on May 27, four days before the Government sent a chunk of the workforce back to work and let some non-essential shops reopen.
Writing in the study, SAGE said: ‘Without a highly effective system of testing, tracing and isolating, there is little headroom for loosening measures without R returning above 1.’
Nine documents were today published by the Government Office for Science, which is headed by Sir Patrick Vallance, England’s chief scientific adviser.
They are among dozens in a tranche of papers presented to SAGE over recent months to help guide ministers through the crisis.
SAGE estimated 50,000 people could die by September if compliance with lockdown was low, in a report submitted to ministers on March 29
But, as of today, the official coronavirus death toll in Britain already stands at nearly 44,000
SAGE’s 50,000 deaths prediction came on March 29, five days after the UK went into lockdown and cases were doubling every two to three days.
On the day the scientific paper was published, the UK’s coronavirus death toll stood at 1,669.
The study says that the ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ assumes poor compliance with lockdown and social distancing measures.
It estimated that cases would only rise to 50,000 if half of households ignored stay-at-home measures and three in 10 people with symptoms disregarded them.
The report estimated that there would be no Covid-19 deaths by July 7 if there was good compliance from the British public.
SAGE said this prediction relied on 75 per cent of families adhering to household quarantine and 70 per cent of symptomatic cases self-isolating.
Oxford University surveys have concluded that about 70 per cent of Britons have followed the Covid rules to the letter of the law through the crisis.
Yet the official death toll – which only includes diagnosed Covid patients – already tipped 44,000 today.
Figures by the Office for National Statistics, a non-ministerial Government department, predict the true death rate to be well beyond 50,000.
The ONS includes deaths that are suspected Covid. Many cases and deaths early in the crisis were missed because of a lack of widespread testing.
SAGE scientists have since admitted publicly that they underestimated how many cases had already been imported into the UK from Europe by mid-March, which may explain the low estimate.
A separate paper submitted to ministers in May warned that the R rate – the average number of people a coronavirus patient infects – would shoot above 1 unless contact tracing was up to scratch.
Keeping the R below 1 is critical because it prevents cases from growing exponentially and the epidemic spiralling back out of control.
The paper on R rates was submitted to No 10 on May 27, four days before Boris Johnson tentatively loosened lockdown.
SAGE warned in its recommendations that without ‘a highly effective system of testing, tracing and isolating, there is little headroom for loosening measures without Rt returning above 1’.
Mr Johnson appeared to heed the warning because the measures were very gradual, allowing a limited number of non-essential shops to reopen, letting people exercise outdoors for as long as they liked and allowing two people from separate households to meet at a two metre distance.
SAGE has also suggested that testing at potential super-spreader events like concerts and football matches might be better than individual contact tracing.
It reviewed scientific studies done on super-spreader events, where one symptomatic patients passed the virus onto multiple others.
In a report submitted to the Government on June 3, researchers highlighted that up to 70 per cent of new cases in South Korea were emerging in clusters.
A similar theme has been seen in New Zealand, where more than four in 10 new cases caught the infection at a super-spreader event.
The scientists looked at 201 super-spreader events, almost all of which were either purely indoors, where the virus lingers in the air and finds it easier to spread.
Ninety per cent of clusters saw fewer than 100 people become infected. These events included weddings, live sport matches, bars, shopping centres, conferences and work.
The 10 per cent which saw more than 100 people infected included hospitals, care homes, food factories, prisons, shcools and cruise ships.
In its recommendations, SAGE said: ‘Rapid identification of clusters may be disproportionately important for control, e.g. large-scale testing and quarantine based on event/location could be contributing larger reduction than reconstruction of individual-level transmission chains via contact tracing.
‘Identification and prevention of clusters would be easier if most transmission occurs in predictable settings/situations.’
Meanwhile, one of the other papers made public today found that thorough hand washing can slash the spread of respiratory infections in the absence of social distancing.
The most recent literature review of randomised scientific trials reports a 16 per cent reduction in the illnesses, the report says.
The majority of the studies looked at in the review focused on flu, SAGE said, but one assessed the impact of hand hygiene on seasonal coronaviruses.
According to SAGE, this paper ‘concludes that moderate-frequency handwashing was associated with significantly reduced risk of contracting coronavirus’.
The literature suggests that hand-washing within a minute of touching a potentially contaminated surface is the most effective way to prevent infection.
SAGE recommended the Government the review highlights the need for more hand sanitising facilities in public spaces, shops, public transport and work places.
The Government scientists write in the report: ‘The effectiveness of hand hygiene is increased when combined with other measures, such as face masks. Combination measures are therefore most likely to be effective.’
It’s unclear when this report was submitted to the Government because it is not dated.
But it appears to have been handed over early in the crisis, when Number 10 was trying to curb the epidemic without having to impose a strict lockdown.