UK ‘Faces 50,000 Cases A Day By Mid-October'

We are seeing a rate of increase across the great majority of country, urging public to respect stricter guidelines on social distancing. This is not someone else’s problem. It’s all of our problem, says chief medical officer

England is on track for about 50,000 coronavirus cases a day by mid-October and a surging death toll unless the public gets serious about preventive action, top UK advisors warned on Monday.

Rates of infection in England are replicating the strong resurgence of COVID-19 seen in France and Spain, roughly doubling every seven days, the government’s chief medical officer Chris Whity told a media briefing.

“We are seeing a rate of increase across the great majority of the country,” he said, urging the public to respect stricter guidelines on social distancing.

“This is not someone else’s problem. It’s all of our problem.”

“If this continued along the path...the number of deaths directly from COVID ... will continue to rise, potentially on an exponential curve, that means doubling and doubling and doubling again and you can quickly move from really quite small numbers to really very large numbers,” Whity said.

“If we don’t do enough the virus will take off and at the moment that is the path that we are clearly on and if we do not change course then we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult problem.”