Coronavirus: Elderly should stay away from Mother’s Day lunch
The over-70s should avoid Mother’s Day lunch with their children and grandchildren the chief scientific adviser has said today, as he warns that 20,000 coronavirus-related deaths would be “a good outcome”.
Sir Patrick Vallance, who has been one of the two chief medical experts to appear alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson during recent press conferences, told MPs this afternoon a “reasonable ball park” estimate was that 55,000 people were now infected with covid-19.
Speaking to the Commons’ health committee, which is chaired by former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, Vallance noted that seasonal flu led to around 8,000 “excess deaths” each year.
“If we can get [the number of coronavirus deaths] down to 20,000 or below that’s a good outcome of where we would hope to get to with this outbreak,” he said. “But it’s still horrible.”
The social distancing measures that have now been introduced – which include recommendations that people work from home wherever possible, avoid pubs, restaurants and other social environments, and quarantine for at-risk groups including the over-70s, should reduce the peak of the spread by around 50 per cent.
“We are interested in two things: saving lives and protecting the most vulnerable – that has been the driving force that has continued in all of our output,” Vallance said.
Asked if the social distancing advice for over-70s announced yesterday meant that people that age should avoid Sunday lunch with their children or grandchildren, Vallance simply said “they shouldn’t do it”.
The elderly should “avoid crowded spaces, avoid gatherings, don’t go to the club you normally go to… reduce travel, try to avoid unnecessary travel. Don’t go out to do your usual things, going to the shops and so on, unless you absolutely have to”.
Those at risk can go for a walk “if you’re keeping your distance” but he warned against “group exercise”.
He insisted that there was global “variability” over whether to close schools, and stressed it was “absolutely still on the table”, but warned “it is not without quite complex consequences”.
Vallance revealed there was no “cosy consensus” among the medical experts advising the government, and warned that the approach would have to be “nimble” as it reacts to real-time changes.
“I don’t know how long these measures are going to be needed for,” he said. “Modelling so far certainly suggests longer than two weeks… it’s going to be months, I don’t know how many months. It is going to have to be data driven – it might be more, it might be less and, by the way, things might have to change quickly.
“That’s not a sudden change of strategy, it’s because you are responding to the information you have got.”
The same is true of when restrictions are lifted, as there is a risk of the virus “bubbling back up again”, Vallance said.