When Will Coronavirus Cases Peak In The UK?
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The peak of the coronavirus outbreak in the UK is coming sooner than expected, Matt Hancock said on Friday, adding it would likely be here “in the next few weeks”.
Asked about reports that Britain could see a peak on April 12, Hancock told Sky News: “I defer to the scientists on the exact predictions – I’m not going to steer you away from that.
“That is one perfectly possible outcome.”
As confirmed cases worldwide topped 1,000,000 and deaths 50,000, this sounds like a sliver of good news in one the most turbulent of modern times.
But what does it actually mean, how is the prediction being made, and what will happen when we reach the peak?
HuffPost UK has the answers...
What is a peak?
The peak of the coronavirus outbreak will occur when the number of new infections each day stabilises and then falls.
Politicians such as Hancock rightly talk of the peak as a milestone in the fight against the pandemic but it’s important to realise that it will not be the end of the crisis.
How does an outbreak reach a peak?
There are currently two factors that contribute to the peak – social distancing measures and immunity, although the former is more important right now than the latter for a very simple reason.
“This is a new virus that the human race has not encountered previously, so nobody has any immunity to it,” Dr Peter English, a consultant in communicable disease control, tells HuffPost UK.
Every virus has something scientists call the “reproduction number”, shortened to R0 and pronounced “R naught”.
This is the average number of people one infected person will infect on. The R0 for coronavirus is around 2.5. “So you get a doubling roughly every five days in the number of cases,” says Dr English.
The R0 will be brought down over time by social distancing and the gradual spread of immunity as people get the virus and recover.
When R0 becomes 1,...
