LONDON — Global scientists have criticized the U.K. government’s plans to ease almost all Covid-19 restrictions, calling it unethical and dangerous for the entire planet.
Gathering at a virtual summit on Friday, leading scientists and government advisors from all over the world warned that Britain was heading for disaster by removing most of its remaining restrictions on Monday.
The event came as more than 1,200 scientists backed a letter to the Lancet medical journal, in which U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans were dubbed “dangerous and premature.”
England will see most of it last remaining restrictions, including mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing, removed on Monday, which Johnson has said will be an “irreversible” move.
Johnson has fiercely defended his new strategy and has argued that now is “the right time to proceed,” before the weather turned colder and as “the natural firebreak of the school holidays” approached.
“It is absolutely vital that we proceed now with caution … we cannot simply revert instantly from Monday to life as it was before Covid,” he said at a press conference Monday.
Speaking on Friday’s panel, Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit of London’s UCL, warned that there was potential for a new variant of Covid to emerge this summer.
“Any mutation that can infect vaccinated people better has a big selection advantage and can spread,” she said. “And because of our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the U.K. will likely spread to the rest of the world — we saw it with alpha, and I’m absolutely sure that we contributed to the rise of delta through Europe and North America.”
“The U.K. policy doesn’t just affect us, it affects everybody — everybody has a stake in what we do,” she added.
Clinical epidemiologist Deepti Gurdasani, who also attended the summit, agreed, saying on Twitter before the event that “the world is watching the current avoidable crisis unfold in the U.K.”
Michael Baker, a professor of public health and a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s advisory group, said he was “amazed” by the British government’s plans to lift almost all restrictions on Monday.
Baker suggested the U.K. government seemed to be reverting to a “herd immunity approach,” which he dubbed “completely unacceptable,” arguing that the strategy had “failed dismally around the globe.”
New Zealand has widely been seen as successful at suppressing the coronavirus within its borders, and life in the island nation has returned to a state of relative normalcy. The country currently has 48 “active” cases, all of which were found in people entering the country, and nine of which were reported in the last 24 hours. There are zero cases within the community, according to New Zealand’s Ministry of Health.
