The COVID Diaries – 40 7th May
At the UK government’s briefing today, we heard a bit more about the “R”, or reproduction, number which shows us how fast the coronavirus is spreading. An R number of more than one means each person who gets the virus passes it on to more than one person, with the result that the infection quickly escalates. One of the key aims of the government’s lockdown policy has been to get the R number significantly below one.
At today’s government briefing, the foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the R number was somewhere between 0.5 and 0.9. This would mean that the number of new cases will fall.
But earlier a government advisor, Prof John Edmunds, said it had gone up a little – to between 0.75 and 1 – meaning the infection rate could increase. He said this was due to the spread in care homes, not in the community.
The danger is that the epidemic in care homes will spread back into the community, meaning it may not be safe to relax the current lockdown restrictions.