THE UK government's chief scientist has warned of hundreds of daily deaths if the country does not get to grips with the spread of coronavirus.
Sir Patrick Valance has said the spread of Covid-19 is now doubling across the country every seven days, and could quickly spread out of control.
He explained: "There's no doubt, we're in a situation where the numbers increasing.
"If the doubling time stays at seven days, and of course the challenge therefore, is to make sure that the doubling time does not stay at seven days... There are already things in place which are expected to slow that and to make sure that we do not enter into this exponential growth and end up with the problems that you would predict.
"As a result of that, that requires speed.
It requires action, and it requires enough in order to be able to bring that down.
"As we said, cases are increasing, hospitalisations, are following. Deaths, unfortunately, will follow that. And there is the potential for this to move very fast."
In a graph, Sir Patrick set out what could happen if the virus is not brought under control.
He stressed the graph was "not a prediction" but showed simply if the cases kept doubling every seven days, in a month's time there could be as many as 50,000 new cases each day and more than 200 daily deaths.
He was joined this morning by Sir Chris Whitty, Chief medical officer, who said the country had "in a bad sense, turned a corner" with the fight against the pandemic.
Sir Chris said the number of deaths from coronavirus going forward would not be as high as when the first wave hit the country, however would still be much higher than the number of deaths from flu.
He warned that claims the secnod wave of the virus is not as deadly as the first were unfounded, explaining: "Lots of people have said maybe this is a milder virus than it was in April.
"I'm afraid, although that would be great if that were true, we see no evidence that is the case."
He said the public must focus for the next six months on preventing the spread of infection.
He said: "We should see this as a six month problem that we have to deal with collectively, it's not indefinite, But in this period of the next six months, I think we have to realize that we have to take this collectively, very seriously."
In a stark warning, Sir Chris said there would be three tangible effects for the public if everyone does not take precautions to curb the spread.
He said not only would there be more deaths, but the economy would suffer due to further lockdowns and the NHS could become overwhelmed.
He said: " Now what we're seeing is a rate of increase across the great majority of the country. Its going at different rates, but it is now increasing. "This is not someone else's problem. This is all of our problem."
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