Coronavirus: SAGE says four-week lockdown delay will save thousands of lives

Delaying the end of lockdown by four weeks could halve the number of people who get admitted to hospital with Covid, SAGE told the Government last week in a meeting that persuaded Boris Johnson to cancel June 21. But in the meeting last week they admitted: 'Most of the benefit comes from the first four weeks of delay' DEATHS: SAGE modelling by experts at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Warwick University suggested there could be between 250 to more than 500 deaths per day in the third wave this summer if Step 4 went ahead as planned on June 21 HOSPITAL PATIENTS: Both teams estimated that there would be the same number of people in hospital by August as there were in the first wave in the spring of 2020 HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS: The modellers did not expect daily hospital admissions to reach the levels seen in the spring peak, with them topping out at between 2,000 and 3,000 per day in August INFECTIONS: SPI-M warned that the number of people catching the virus each day could spike to more than 250,000 per day over the summer wit the new fast-spreading variant and no lockdown rules. But in the worst case scenario it is almost twice as bad as last year's crisis In the SPI-M modelling the researchers suggested that if the strain were 80 per cent more transmissible – the upper limit of the team's estimate – admissions could peak at more than 6,000 per day, higher even than the second wave SAGE said that, as the vaccine rollout moves forward and more people get jabs, a greater proportion of people admitted to hospital are likely to be there despite having had a vaccine. The increase in new admissions to hospital has been significantly slower than cases – there was a 15 per cent increase in the most recent week, from 875 new admissions by June 1 to 1,008 in the week to June 8 – but this is likely an effect of the lag between someone getting infected and then getting sick enough to need hospital treatment INTENSIVE CARE CLOSE TO 2021 LOW BUT RISING SLOWLY WITH NORTH WEST WORST HIT The number of patients with Covid in intensive care remains low in the UK, with only 158 people critically ill in hospital by June 10. All over-50s in England could be fully protected against Covid by July 1 — nearly two weeks after 'freedom day on June 21 — but it will take until September for all adults to have had two jabs, MailOnline analysis can reveal DEATHS STILL FLAT – BUT QUARTER OF NEW VARIANT VICTIMS WERE FULLY VACCINATED The number of people dying each day of coronavirus remains relatively flat – the daily average reported deaths is nine and the figure has been between eight and 10 for the past three weeks.