One of the Government’s top coronavirus experts believes he has contracted the virus, he revealed on Twitter this morning.
Professor Neil Ferguson, an Imperial College London virus expert who has been advising UK officials for two months, said he is now in self-isolation.
In a tweet posted on Wednesday morning he said: ‘Sigh. Developed a slight dry but persistent cough yesterday and self isolated even though I felt fine. Then developed high fever at 4am today. There is a lot of COVID-19 in Westminster.’
Professor Ferguson, who is in his early 50s, was one of the main authors of a landmark scientific paper published this week which led to the Government ramping up its action plan.
His projection that 260,000 people could have died if officials hadn’t announced social distancing measures was one of the driving forces behind Britain’s current situation.
Professor Neil Ferguson, an Imperial College London expert who has been advising the Government on coronavirus for months, now believes he has the virus
Professor Ferguson revealed he had fallen ill in a tweet posted this morning. He is now in self-isolation in his flat in central London
Speaking BBC Radio 4 this morning, Professor Ferguson said: ‘So I got a slight cough, actually while I was being interviewed by you [BBC Radio 4] yesterday.
‘In the abundance of caution, I self-isolated then so I’m stuck in my flat on my own for seven days in central London.
‘Then at four o’clock in the morning I got a high fever, which is somewhat better now but I still feel fairly grotty.
‘I’ve been in so many meetings in the last few weeks, and a number of my colleagues from other universities who have been advising the government in those meetings have also developed symptoms.’
Data from Professor Ferguson’s team suggested that nothing can stop the coronavirus overwhelming NHS intensive care units. Even the most strict quarantine measures would not prevent there being far more cases than there are beds to handle
Officially, just 1,950 people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and 71 have died. The true number of infected patients is likely to be 55,000 or more, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance admitted
Professor Ferguson’s illness raises the prospect that senior politicians and the experts leading the UK’s fight against the outbreak may now be swept up in it and forced to isolate themselves at home.
When asked on the radio whether he had been in contact with the Prime Minister and his chief scientific and medical advisers he admitted he had.
He has been one of the most vocal scientists since the outbreak began, taking part in regular press briefings and television interviews.
The coronavirus outbreak is something he appears to have been preparing for for his entire career.
His Imperial College profile says: ‘A major research interest throughout my career has been on developing mathematical models of the geographic spread of newly emergent pathogens – such as… SARS and MERS’.
As such, Professor Ferguson said he wasn’t surprised that he’d caught the virus.
‘I have to say central London is the hotspot in the UK at the moment,’ he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘There almost certainly are thousands of cases in central London, so it’s not that surprising. I’ve been in lots of meetings and contacting lots of people.’
He even admitted there was a chance he could have been infectious while in Downing Street yesterday, adding: ‘We think there’s infectiousness for about a day before symptoms, and I was actually at a Downing Street press conference that day.
‘I mean there is a slight risk I may have infected someone but that probably is quite slight.’
Professor Ferguson’s work is believed to have been the driving force between Boris Johnson’s announcement this week that people should stop socialising, stop travelling, work from home and avoid visiting elderly or unwell relatives.
The ‘social distancing measures’ were a dramatic step up in the UK’s policy of how it planned to handle the outbreak.
A paper published by Professor Ferguson and his colleagues this week warned that the Government’s earlier plan could have led to a quarter of a million people dying.
The bombshell report emphasised there’s a chance the measures would have to carry on until a vaccine is created, which could take 18 months or more.
The Imperial model predicted that closing schools and universities would not necessarily relieve pressure on the NHS, but simply delay it – the spike in critical care bed occupancy is the same size as it would be if nothing was done, but it happens six months later
Professor Ferguson is believed to have been regularly meeting with senior Government officials such as chief medical officer Chris Whitty (centre), Health Secretary Matt Hancock (right) and Department of Health permanent secretary Chris Wormald (left)
If no action at all had been taken against the coronavirus it would have claimed 510,000 lives, the team’s report said.
Had the Government stuck with their strategy of trying to ‘mitigate’ the spread – allowing it to continue but attempting to slow it down – with limited measures such as home isolation for those with symptoms this number would be roughly halved to 260,000.
If the strictest possible measures are introduced – including school closures and mandatory home quarantine – the number of deaths over a two-year period will fall below 20,000, the scientists said.
‘Instead of talking about hundreds of thousands of deaths, there still will be a significant health impact that we’ll be talking about,’ Professor Ferguson said.
‘Hopefully, tens of thousands… maybe, depending on how early we are, just a few thousands.’
Other points in the Imperial College report, titled Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand, included:
- Lockdown measures could be brought back if the virus resurfaces after this epidemic is over
- The coronavirus outbreak is worse than anything the world has seen since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
- It was ‘highly likely’ people would have started social distancing by themselves out of fear or responsibility, even if the Government hadn’t told them to
- Dramatic measures to suppress an outbreak carry ‘enormous social and economic costs which may themselves have significant impact on health and well-being’
- Virus transmission happens evenly – one third of cases are caught in the home, one third at work or school, and one third elsewhere in the community
- People are thought to be infectious from 12 hours before symptoms start, or from four days after catching the infection if someone doesn’t get symptoms
- Patients who do get symptoms are thought to be 50 per cent more infectious than those who don’t
- People are thought to develop at least short-term immunity after catching the virus, meaning they can’t catch it again
- Approximately 4.4 per cent of patients need hospital care. 30 per cent of those need intensive care, and 50 per cent of intensive care patients can be expected to die, according to data from China
- The average length of a hospital stay for a coronavirus patient is 10 days – eight days for those who recover quickly; 16 days for those who need intensive care