Ross Clark

The daily death toll has been a constant backdrop to the Covid-19 crisis. Would we ever have entered lockdown, would so many people have been driven to panic, were it not for the publication, every afternoon, of the number of deaths in the past 24 hours? It has helped set in the minds of the public the idea that this is a lethal disease, on a scale completely removed from other common diseases. How much differently would we see Covid-19, though, if we were also fed with a slightly different statistic: the number of indirect deaths, caused not by the disease itself but by other factors associated with lockdowns: closure of medical facilities, fear of going to a hospital and so on.

Some countries are refusing to open their schools for fear of a prompting a second wave of coronavirus infections. But their policies would appear to be flatly contradicted by evidence from Iceland. There, a company called deCODE Genetics, in association with the country’s directorate of health and the national university hospital, has analysed the results of coronavirus tests on 36,500 people. The tests identified 1801 cases of people suffering from the disease – and ten deaths. Each case was carefully tracked. In not a single case could the researchers find evidence of a child passing on the disease to their parents. The company’s CEO, Kari Stefansson, revealed the findings in an interview carried on the Science Museum website.

Cambridge professor of the public understanding of risk David Spiegelhalter recently made the point that, given the uncertainties over exactly what constitutes a death from coronavirus, the number we should we watching is the ONS’s figure for deaths from all causes. That, he argued, will give us the surest indication as to the progress of the epidemic. For anyone minded to take his advice, the ONS’s figure for deaths from all causes fell again in the week ending 1 May for the second week running. In England and Wales, 17,953 deaths were registered, down from 21,997 in the week ending 24 April and 22,351 in the week ending 17 April.

Today, the cabinet has to decide where to go next with the lockdown – although the decision will not be announced until Sunday. Boris Johnson has talked of a ‘menu of options’ for relaxing some of the measures, but we have been warned not to expect too much. The government has also distanced itself from speculation that rules on outdoor exercise will be loosened, as well as garden centres and a few other businesses allowed to reopen. How does anyone know which lockdown measures have been effective and which haven’t? A team of epidemiologists led by Paul Hunter have attempted to do that, and their pre-published paper may well feed into the government’s decision-making today.

Over the past few weeks the government’s scientific advisers have indicated that the only real way out of the coronavirus crisis is a vaccine – until then a high degree of social distancing will have to remain. Given that no-one expects a vaccine to be ready for deployment for another year at the very earliest, this would have very serious implications for the economy, and for society at large. But there is another possible route out of social distancing – not so good, but possibly available a lot more quickly. This is for an effective therapeutic drug to emerge. It would not stop anyone contracting the virus but could improve the prospects for those who do catch it.

Six weeks ago Britain stood as a bit of an outlier among western countries in that our government seemed set to manage, rather than suppress, coronavirus. It rejected the idea that it was pursuing ‘herd immunity,’ but seemed to do just that. Now we stand out for a different reason: we are the only country which appears to be committing itself to remain in lockdown, or close approximation thereof, until a vaccine arrives. In much of Europe, lockdown restrictions are tentatively being relaxed as infection rates and death rates fall. Here, ministers tell us it is far too early for that sort of thing – we will need restrictions on our lives, in one form or another, until we have a vaccine available. Is that a plausible strategy?

Finally, the government is to start antibody tests to see how prevalent infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus – which causes Covid-19 – is among the general population. Over the next few days, testing kits are being sent to 20,000 randomly-selected households. The results will be crucial because it will inform us how effective lockdown has been – and whether there is any point in continuing with that policy. If, say, five per cent showed signs of having had the virus it would mean that the epidemic potentially had a long way yet to run. If 50 per cent have been infected with the virus it would mean that lockdown has failed and was pointless in any case – we would already be on the verge of herd immunity. So what will be the result?

The science of epidemiology relies a lot on modelling because, for obvious reasons, controlled experimentation would be unethical. But in the case of Covid-19 we do have something approaching a real-life experiment – in that Sweden has declined to follow other European countries into lockdown. Instead, it has followed a policy which might be summed up as social distancing-lite. Gatherings of more than 50 people have been outlawed, closing theatres and putting an end to sports events. But children up to the age of 16 are still attending school, shops and restaurants are still open – albeit with rules preventing people standing up at the bar – and no police officer is to blow a whistle at you for sitting on a park bench.

Another day, and yet more evidence has appeared that could indicate the number of people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, might be vastly higher than official figures suggest. This time a Californian study suggests the figure in one county could be more than 50 times the number who knew they had had the virus. A team from Stanford university and other US universities recruited volunteers in Santa Clara County via Facebook adverts and produced a sample of 3000 representatives of the county as a whole. They were then invited for blood tests to detect the presence of antibodies to the virus. The result was positive in 1.5 per cent of cases. Adjusting for age, gender and ethnicity the results suggest that 2.