The lockdown should be tightened for people who are over 70 or have pre-existing medical conditions so that restrictions can be relaxed for everyone else and life can start to return to normal, a group of academics has suggested.
Under the proposal anybody with coronavirus symptoms would continue to be required to self-isolate, according to academics from the universities of London and Edinburgh.
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The ‘segmenting and shielding’ proposal is likely to infuriate many people who say a gradual easing of the lockdown would be discriminatory.
However, the academics insist that the ‘twin approach’ is the only “immediately available” strategy that can ease the lockdown while saving lives and protecting the NHS.
Frequent testing
Those people that continue in lockdown would be tested frequently, even daily, for symptoms, while care homes, hospitals and potentially households would be given help on improving hygiene to reduce the danger of transmission.
“Segmentation and shielding recognises that, although social distancing impacts on the whole of society, the public health burden of Covid-19 is concentrated in a subset of vulnerable people,” said Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh.
“By targeting protection to those that need it most, the strategy helps to ensure that the health system is not overwhelmed by severe cases, while giving policy makers greater leeway to partially relax social distancing measures for the majority of the population,” he said.
The academics have modelled a range of scenarios to illustrate how different restrictions could be applied to different groups. They have sent their findings to the UK and Scottish Governments.
Segmentation strategy
The strategy involves segmenting the population into different risk groups – based on a person’s medical history and potential healthcare needs.
Such an approach would give young healthy adults and children greater freedoms while ensuring that the most vulnerable are protected.
Researchers say lockdown restrictions could be eased for most people, as long as sufficient measures stay in place to keep transmission rates low.
These would include self-isolation of people with Covid-19, quarantining affected households, contact tracing and voluntary social distancing.
The most vulnerable – the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions – would still need to be shielded from contact with anyone potentially infected with the virus.
Keeping Britons safe
Prof Sarah Harper, Clore Professor of Gerontology, University of Oxford, said: “The use of age alone as a criteria for vulnerable has some concerns.
“Importantly we know that while at the population level age is a good general predictor for vulnerability this appears (at this stage and with our current evidence) to be related to underlying health conditions.”
“There is considerable variation in the presence of underlying health conditions in the over 70s. Using chronological age without taking into account individual’s health conditions will confine healthy active older individuals to their homes,” she said.
“While there is a clear association between age and the efficiency of our immune systems, we do not have sufficient data to make an explicit judgement and the variability is likely to be considerable,” Prof Harper added.
