Coronavirus cases slowing down in the UK

Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist advising the UK government, just stated that the spread of coronavirus in the UK is showing early signs of slowing.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today he stated:

“In the UK, we can see some early signs of slowing in some indicators. Less so in deaths because deaths are lagged by long time from when the measures come into force. […] But we look at the numbers of new hospital admissions today, for instance, that does seem to be slowing down a little bit now. It’s not yet plateaued as the numbers are increasing each day but the rate of that increase has slowed. […] We see similar patterns in a number of European countries.”

The slowing down of new hospital admission rates is the same trend that we have been seeing in New York over the past few days. We’ve also seen deaths begin to slow down in Italy.

So we are definitely still in the thick of things but it is encouraging to see the rates of transmissions, hospitalizations, and even deaths begin to slow in different parts of the world, even if they are still in the early stages of decline.

I think these are strong indicators that social distancing is working and also that the governments are starting to get a firmer grasp on how to contain transmission of the disease. 

I think it is good to remember that in a lot of places this disease first popped up at the beginning of this month and we have only been dealing with these infections for a few weeks even though it feels like much longer.

April is probably going to be the month where we see the first major peaks in the US.

So as a nation, we just need to ride out the next month.

The total number of cases will likely skyrocket along with deaths but we might start to see the curves go down in some cases and that will be highly encouraging to see.

If we can get through the next month without our healthcare systems collapsing then I believe we will be able to get through this with casualties on the lower side of what some have predicted.

Predictions for what will happen in April have been pretty extreme.

For example, one model used by TIME magazine predicted earlier this month that with low testing and intervention we could see over 1 million cases in the US by the end of April. But with a high level of testing and intervention the cases may be at 159,086.

So that is a huge gap but here’s the thing: we already have 143K cases in the US, so we have already essentially met the best case scenario predicted by the researchers before the month of April has even begun.

So I truly believe April is going to tell us everything we need to know about where we stand against this virus.