Covid: Sage expert accuses government of ‘shutting its eyes and letting virus rip’

Susan Michie warns that ‘even more infectious’ new variants will lead to unnecessary deaths and hospitalisations

Susan Michie says she fears the current cabinet will ‘sit on its hands’ as cases rise (ITV)

A Sage expert has accused the government of “shutting its eyes and letting Covid rip” while the NHS is on its knees.

Susan Michie said she feared the makeshift cabinet would “sit on its hands” as coronavirus cases hit a predicted 350,000 a day next week.

The professor of health psychology at University College London warned that new variants that are “even more infectious” would lead to unnecessary deaths and hospitalisations.

She told the Mirror: “We don’t have a public health policy for Covid right now, and if we don’t act, we’ll get variants that are even more infectious, and these will lead to increased hospitalisations and deaths.

“The number of people with long Covid will increase significantly beyond the current 2 million, and the country will be continuously disrupted, with some sectors in danger of grinding to a standstill in the autumn.

“The government’s policy seems to be, ‘Shut your eyes and let it rip.’

“But the NHS is on its knees, and public health experts, Sage and Independent Sage have been predicting this since July last year, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise.”

Britain’s fifth wave of coronavirus infections is being driven by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the virus.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 2.7 million people in private households are estimated to have had Covid-19 last week, up 18 per cent from 2.3 million the previous week.

This is the highest estimate since late April, but is still below the record high of 4.9 million, which was reached at the end of March during the wave of infections caused by the BA.2 variant.

Susan Michie warned that new Covid variants that are ‘even more infectious’ would lead to unnecessary deaths and hospitalisations (PA)

Covid is most prevalent in Scotland, where around one in 17 people have the virus, up from one in 18 the previous week.

This is the highest estimate for Scotland since early April.

However, infections in Scotland have been increasing at a slower rate compared with other UK nations, the ONS said.

In England, 2.2 million people were likely to have had the virus last week, the equivalent of around one in 25, up from one in 30.

Prof Michie called for the government to invest in better ventilation and air filtration systems in schools and public buildings, as the latest figures show Covid cases are on the rise among the school workforce.

Data linking the School Workforce Census with NHS Test and Trace and National Immunisation Management Service data found that staff in both primary and secondary schools had higher rates of positive tests in the spring term in 2022 compared with the autumn term in 2021.

The ONS data also found that primary school staff had higher rates of positive test cases across both terms.

Additional reporting by Press Association