UK health secretary Matt Hancock has denied the government is pursuing a strategy of developing "herd immunity" amid growing criticism of its approach.
More than 400 scientists have signed a letter criticising the government approach and calling for tougher measures to prevent Covid19 spread.
The scientists said that herd immunity was "not a viable option," criticising chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance. The row unfolded after Sir Patrick stated: "The vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission."
The scientists, led by applied mathematicians at Queen Mary, University of London, criticise the delay in introducing social distancing, calling for immediate "more restrictive" measures.
Yesterday Mr Hancock said: "We have a plan, based on the expertise of world-leading scientists. Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy.
"Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate."
He also claimed success for the UK’s early containment strategy, stating: "We have acted to contain the spread of the virus so far. We have carried out some of the highest number of tests in Europe, our surveillance testing is among the most sophisticated in the world and the UK’s plans for the rapid response to and mitigation of the spread of an epidemic are ranked number one above any other country by the Global Health Security Index."
It came as the World Health Organisation is set to announce that the scale of the worldwide pandemic has now outstripped the original outbreak in China.
The world outside China has now documented more than 70,000 cases with 10,000 a day being added. China has chronicled 81,000 cases, Deaths remain lower than in China – at 2,531 compared with 3,204.
The data from Italy suggests that the country’s lockdown has led to thousands of cases of infection no longer being logged. The country has a death rate, amongst those with confirmed diagnoses, of about 7%. In China it stands at 3.9% and globally at 3.7%.
Italy reported an extra 368 deaths yesterday.
In the UK, death numbers began to accelerate – with 14 new deaths reported yesterday, bringing the national total to 35. Deaths in Spain doubled from 136 to 288.
The UK government launched an appeal yesterday for manufacturers to step up production of ventilators.
It also announced plans to purchase hundreds of bed spaces in private hospitals.
Intensive care doctor, Dr Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors’ Association, said: "This announcement will be welcomed by doctors across the country who have been shouting from the rooftops about the lack of intensive care resources. Doctors have closely followed the events in Italy where ventilators have run out. Whilst NHS hospitals make emergency plans to create ITU beds and the government purchases more ventilators, the elephant in the room is the lack of highly trained intensive care nurses and doctors.
"The NHS faces this pandemic on a background of severe under-staffing with almost 43,000 nurse and 10,000 doctor vacancies. It is pointless acquiring new ventilators without enough highly trained staff to operate them.
"The purchasing of extra capacity in private hospitals may solve the issue of a lack of physical space in the NHS but there are very few intensive care beds in private hospitals in the UK."
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