We all want to avoid another lockdown. We need sustainable public health interventions that will keep Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths at an acceptable level, and get us through the winter. What could this mean in practice?<\/p>\n
1. The most important public health intervention to control Covid-19 is our vaccination programme. This has slowed down in recent months. Also, in effect, it has split into four distinct programmes:<\/p>\n
– a programme aimed at people 16 and over. This has almost stopped, with around 10% of adults in the UK still unvaccinated (higher in London).<\/p>\n
– a third primary dose programme aimed at\u00a0people with weak immune systems<\/a>. This has been\u00a0poorly planned and implemented by NHS England<\/a>\u00a0and has caused a lot of confusion.<\/p>\n – a booster dose programme. This is going OK but could be speeded up to provide more protection for key groups of people before the full onset of winter.<\/p>\n – a programme for 12-15 year olds. This has got off to a very slow start in England.<\/p>\n Speeding up all these vaccination programmes is essential and is our best defence against Covid-19.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Try to reduce social contacts; for example, by asking staff to work from home where possible. The government has been encouraging people to \u201cget back into the office\u201d but I think we should be cautious over the winter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. Face masks. The government needs to reconsider its policy. In my view, face masks should be required in settings such as shops and public transport.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. Vaccine mandates \/ vaccine passports \/ negative test results. Many European countries require these for entry to higher risk settings such as nightclubs, bars and indoor events. No vaccine is 100% effective but the fact is that an unvaccinated person is much more likely to become infected and transmit infection to others than a vaccinated person. The government has flipped-flopped on this policy (currently against) but have said they may reconsider.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Effective measures now can help bring Covid-19 under control, protect public health, keep pressures on the NHS manageable, and get us through the Winter.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We all want to avoid another lockdown. We need sustainable public health interventions that will keep Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths at an acceptable level, and get us through the winter. What could this mean in practice? 1. The most important public health intervention to control Covid-19 is our vaccination programme. This has slowed down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296231,404],"tags":[274465],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-health","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}