Boris Johnson may be forced to reimpose lockdown restrictions in the autumn if Covid cases continue to spiral, former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Hunt said the situation facing the NHS is “very serious” with rapidly increasing numbers of hospital admissions.
The UK recorded a further 51,870 infections yesterday — marking the highest figure since 11 January and 60 per cent increase over the past seven days.
The number of people admitted to hospital with Covid has also doubled over the past three weeks, with 717 new admissions recorded yesterday.
Mr Hunt, chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, said “the warning light on the NHS dashboard is not flashing amber, it is flashing red”.
He added: “If they [cases] are still going up as the schools are coming back I think we are going to have to reconsider some very difficult decisions. How we behave over the next few weeks will have a material difference.”
He urged the Government to make urgent changes to the NHS Covid app amid reports that people are deleting it to avoid having to self-isolate.
It comes after Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said last week that ministers are looking at reducing the “sensitivity” of the app, after more than 500,000 people were pinged last week alone.
The NHS Covid app notifies anybody who has spent more than 15 minutes at a two metre distance from somebody who has tested positive for Covid.
Mr Shapps said the Government would consider increasing both the distance and duration of what counts as a Covid contact to avoid a so-called “pingdemic”.
However, scientists have cautioned that loosening the app’s metrics while infections are raging “is like switching off the smoke alarm when the fire is burning”.
“The problem is the fire, not the fire alarm,” said Dr Deepti Gurdasani, epidemiologist at Queen Mary University in London.
Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), added that the UK is facing a period of prolonged Covid-19 infection as the lifting of restrictions goes ahead in England on Monday.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine professor said “this wave of the epidemic will be quite long and drawn out,” adding that cases could reach 100,000 a day within weeks.
“We are at about 50,000 a day now. The epidemic has been doubling roughly every two weeks and so if we allow things as they are for another couple of weeks you could expect it to get to 100,000 cases a day,” he told the Today programme.
Professor Edmunds echoed criticism from world leaders that the Prime Minister acted prematurely in ploughing ahead with plans to lift restrictions on 19 July before the whole population has been vaccinated.
From Monday, nightclubs will reopen and masks will no longer be mandatory in indoor settings, as all social distancing restrictions are due to be scrapped in England.
“That is going to lead to infections in the unvaccinated people — primarily in this instance the younger individuals. It is inevitable that that was going to happen,” said Professor Edmunds.
More than 1,200 scientists from around the world have rallied together to condemn England’s unlocking on Monday, claiming it poses a major threat to the global fight against Covid.
They argued that it will provide fertile territory for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants, with the Delta variant already ripping across the globe.