Coronavirus: Lockdown could be eased further if not for 'shocking' care home epidemic, suggests Neil Ferguson

'We would have a little bit more room, wiggle room as it were', says professor of epidemiology and ex-government adviser

The risk of the pandemic returning would be lower if the government had not botched the fight against coronavirus in care homes, a former adviser says.

Professor Neil Ferguson said ministers would have “more wiggle room” as they ease lockdown restrictions – adding he was “shocked” by the failure to protect care home residents, not just in the UK but “around the world”.

Asked about the critical R reproduction rate – which remains close to 1, above which infections will rise again – the professor of epidemiology stressed that transmission in institutions and the community was “coupled”.

“If we had done a better job – did do a better job – of reducing transmissions in those institutions like hospitals and care homes, we would have a little bit more room, wiggle room as it were,” he told a parliamentary inquiry.

Prof Ferguson added: “The infections in hospitals and care homes spill back into the community – more commonly from the people who work in those institutions.

“So, if you can drive the infection rates low in those institutional settings, you drive the infection lower in the community as a whole.”

The comments come amid controversy over the lifting of some restrictions this week – on household-mixing and reopening schools – despite transmission remaining “high”, according to the official alert level”.

Boris Johnson admitted last month there was still “an epidemic” in care homes, even after the UK passed the Covid-19 peak, and they account for at least a quarter of deaths.

Professor Ferguson, who was forced to quit after his own lockdown breach, told the House of Lords science and technology committee: “I, like many people, am shocked about how badly European – or countries around the world – have protected care home populations.”

He also said the lockdown had been more successful than his Imperial College modellers had predicted, cutting contacts by 85 per cent rather than 75 per cent.

The relaxations brought in so far would not automatically lead to more incidents of coronavirus, which he expected to remain relatively flat over the summer.

But Prof Ferguson warned of great uncertainty about what would happen in September, when the restrictions could be relaxed further, saying the impact on transmission was “very unclear”.

Dr Adam Kucharski, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, criticised any delays in fully introducing the troubled test-and-trace programme.

“By the time someone shows symptoms, they have probably been infectious for a day or two already,” he told the committee.

“So that means, by the time someone has symptoms, reports as a case, their contacts have potentially already been infected, and those people may themselves become infectious three or four further down, so really very soon after.

And Professor Matt Keeling, of the University of Warwick, said: “It was unclear in the early stages of the Wuhan outbreak whether we were going to get a similar sort of scale in the UK or elsewhere in the world.

“So, really, I think Italy was the big eye-opener, that we realised that we could have a large potential outbreak in the UK.”