The UK could be heading straight for a coronavirus like the one which has crippled Italy, experts have warned.
Italy last night put all of its 60million people into lockdown and banned movement between cities in a drastic bid to stop COVID-19, which has infected 9,000 people.
The UK is following the same trajectory, one scientist said, and could end up in a similar situation a few weeks down the line.
There are currently 321 confirmed cases in the UK and five people have died. More infections are expected to be declared later today and throughout the week.
Since February 21, the number of cases in Italy has rocketed from just three to at least 9,172, while in the UK it rose from nine to 321.
A senior medical officer in the government has admitted ‘many thousands’ of Britons will get infected and bestselling British author and former doctor, Adam Kay, warned in a tweet: ‘This is us in a fortnight’.
Images have emerged of coronavirus patients in intensive care in the Cremona Hospital in northern Italy – they are kept laying face down because it may improve the function of a ventilator, which helps failing lungs to work, by reducing the pressure on the lungs
The entire of Italy is now in lockdown and citizens are forbidden from travelling between cities (Pictured, a solder stands guard outside the Duomo Cathedral in Milan)
Professor Mark Handley, at University College London, compared the rate of coronavirus infection in Italy, which is in crisis, to that in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the US and Switzerland and found they’re growing at the same rate
University College London biology professor, Dr Francis Balloux, said: ‘The trajectory of the epidemic in the UK is so far roughly comparable to the one in Northern Italy, but with the epidemic in Northern Italy two to three weeks ahead of the situation in the UK.’
Dr Balloux said that it was possible the UK could face a similar lockdown to the one which has brought Italy to its knees.
After cases of the virus started to spring up in skiing resorts in the country’s Alpine north, entire regions including Milan, Venice and Lake Como were put into quarantine.
The rest of the country has now followed suit – citizens face jail time if they try to travel around the country, schools have been closed, the Serie A professional football league has been called off, public transport is shutting down and museums and large events are off limits to the public.
The UK has so far not taken any dramatic measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which officials yesterday saying they still believe they can stop it.
Experts say the UK – where the number of coronavirus cases started to take off last week – is just two weeks away from being in a situation as bad as Italy’s
Italy is at the centre of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak – at least 9,172 people have been diagnosed with the infection and 463 people have died
Downtown Milan is seen almost deserted today as the government has shut down the entire country to try and stop the coronavirus from spreading (Pictured, the Vittorio Emanuele II shopping mall in Milan)
British bestselling author and former NHS doctor, Adam Kay, compared the UK and Italy situations and said: ‘this is us in a fortnight’
The government’s battle plan has been divided into four stages – ‘contain’, ‘delay’, ‘research’ and ‘mitigate’. Officials are today expected to declare a move to ‘delay’
A graph posted on Twitter by another UCL scientist, Professor Mark Handley, showed that outbreaks in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the US and Switzerland are all following the same trajectory as Italy’s.
Daily increases of approximately 33 per cent are seen in all the countries.
Professor Handley compares them to Japan, where the rate of increase is considerably lower and where cases have been being diagnosed for longer.
He said: ‘Everyone else will be like Italy in 9-14 days time’.
Officials in Britain have already admitted that thousands of people in the UK are expected to catch the deadly disease.
England’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr Jenny Harries, predicted ‘many thousands of people’ would get COVID-19.
Most people only get a mild illness and don’t need medical help, while others may be hospitalised and a small proportion will get pneumonia and die.
Dr Harries told Sky News: ‘We currently have relatively few cases here, which is why we are still in the containment phase [the first step of government action plan].
‘Obviously we will have significant numbers in a way in which the country is not used to.
‘This is the sort of thing that professionally we’re trained for and very rarely see, almost in a professional lifetime.
‘Large numbers of the population will become infected because it’s a naive population, nobody has got antibodies to this virus currently.
‘We will see many thousands of people infected by coronavirus, that’s what we’re seeing in other countries and the important thing for us is to make sure that we manage those infections.’
Boris Johnson yesterday faced a backlash after he held off a decision on upgrading the Government’s coronavirus response despite a Cobra meeting hearing that the UK faces a ‘significant’ outbreak.
The PM chaired a meeting of the emergency committee – but it stopped short of shifting the official strategy from the ‘contain’ phase to focus on efforts to delay the spread.
That could potentially see people being advised to work from home where possible, and vulnerable people – the elderly or those with long-term health problems – urged to stay at home to avoid becoming infected.
More dramatic options include pubs, church halls and schools being closed and football matches called off – although ministers stress those moves are more likely later in the crisis.
Mr Johnson’s official spokesman said: ‘We remain in the contain phase but it is now accepted that this virus is going to spread in a significant way.’
Asked whether the government was being slow to act, the spokesman said the response was based on scientific advice. ‘From the beginning of the outbreak we have based all of our decisions on the best available scientific advice and we will continue to do so,’ he said.
However, former Tory Cabinet minister Rory Stewart said the example of China, and his experience in the Ebola outbreak in Africa last year, showed Mr Johnson could not afford to wait. ‘What you will find is that the government will eventually close schools,’ he told LBC radio. ‘We should be doing it tomorrow.’