As the UK’s second lockdown gets underway, a group of 79 researchers, public health professionals, and healthcare workers are calling for a sustainable public health strategy for COVID-19.
Groups of people social distancing in the park.
The letter, coordinated by Dr Deepti Gurdasani from Queen Mary University of London and published today in The Lancet, makes seven recommendations, including reforming the find, test, trace, isolate and support system, providing sufficient economic and social support during lockdown, and implementing a pandemic response and travel restrictions that are co-ordinated across the UK and Europe.
“To avoid repeated lockdowns and their impacts,” the authors write, “we need a sustainable COVID-19 public health strategy.”
The authors warn that daily COVID-19 deaths have doubled every fortnight since early September, with 2,067 COVID-19 deaths in the last week and around 12,000 more likely in the next month. With 12,000 patients currently hospitalised with COVID-19, they say that health services are close to capacity in many regions.
The group, which comprises experts in public health, epidemiology, medicine, sociology, behavioural sciences, infectious disease, psychiatry and health policy, make the following recommendations for a sustainable COVID-19 strategy for the UK:
The authors conclude: “Controlling the spread of COVID-19 is possible. We need to learn from the mistakes of the last 9 months, lest we find ourselves here yet again.”