A second national lockdown could be imposed, senior Government advisers have warned, as the upper limit of the R rate pushed over one for the first time since restrictions were lifted.
The Prime Minister effectively ruled out another nationwide shutdown, stating that the option was now akin to a nuclear deterrent, in an interview with The Telegraph last month.
However, on Friday the Sage advisory group said Britain’s reproduction number was now between 0.9 and 1.1, with senior sources warning “more nationwide measures” may be needed.
Manchester, the country’s third largest city, has already faced a local lockdown, while Birmingham, the second biggest, is on the brink of restrictions after cases rose, leading to fears it could be only a matter of time before further national measures are imposed.
Although government experts said R was skewed by local outbreaks, and not representative of the country as a whole, they warned that a rise in hospital admissions and deaths could follow.
A senior government source said: “If it doesn’t get contained it may be that some things that have been open, you need to think about whether measures need to be taken to reverse things.
The strategy is to manage this through local outbreak management, but if it moves in the direction of Spain, then clearly you can see what’s happening there, and in France, people are making more nationwide measures. It depends on the trajectory, and how quickly we can get on top of outbreaks.
Another source added: We’re looking at a pretty bumpy autumn and winter and that’s going to go in the direction of increased cases and increased outbreaks.
Scientists fear Britain may follow countries like Spain, Europe’s fastest rising caseload, with 142 cases per 100,000 people. The number of daily cases has risen from 150 when lockdown eased on June 21 to more than 3,000, while hospital admissions have jumped to around 750 per day.
Britain is not on such a steep trajectory, with around 11 cases per 100,000 people and just 97 admitted to hospital. But Public Health England surveillance showed case detections in England increased from 5,763 to 6,418 in the week to Aug 16, up 11 per cent.
Daily cases are nearly double the number at the beginning of June when lockdown measures were eased. Oliver Johnson, a University of Bristol professor of information theory, said: The major concern is that R values of this magnitude do not leave a significant margin before the epidemic starts to grow in size again, and raise the possibility that some re-openings may need to be reversed to allow schools to open safely.