Professor Chris Whitty says it is 'unlikely' the UK will stay in coronavirus lockdown 'indefinitely'

Rebecca Speare-Cole25 April 2020

The UK is unlikely to remain in the current coronavirus lockdown pattern for the indefinite future, England's chief medical officer said today.

Professor Chris Whitty told Westminster's Science and Technology Committee said that the Government were not going to be able to suddenly lift all restrictions.

But Prof Whitty also added that he does not think the UK will have to keep up all the current measures "for the indefinite future".

It comes as the Government faces increasing pressure to lay out an exit strategy for the Covid-19 lockdown.

Prof Whitty told the committee on Friday: “On the one hand, do not anticipate as I hope I have made reasonably clear repeatedly, that we are suddenly going to be able to lift everything, but nor do I think it likely that we will have to keep in exactly the current pattern for the indefinite future.

“There’s somewhere between those two, and working out exactly what that is, and what the timescale of that is, and what the package is, is going to be a difficult task for governments all around the world, and certainly obviously including the UK.”

Prof Whitty also said on Friday that said it is unlikely more than 10 per cent of the population outside London have developed antibodies to coronavirus.

He said he is not at the point where he feels “confident” that he can give a proportion, but added: “My view at the moment, I would love to be proved wrong, is that it is unlikely that any part of the UK maybe outside London will have a seroprevalence much above 10 per cent.

“So I think it’s quite a small proportion of the population… I would be delighted if it was higher than that, that would be very good news.”

Antibody tests are not at the stage yet where they are accurate enough to say with enough confidence that someone has or has not had the disease, he said.

But they will improve, he said, adding: “They are good enough for us to get a feel for how many people as a proportion of the population have actually had the infection.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in