NERVTAG Chair Professor Peter Horby Speaks to G&T on Unlocking In England and More

Professor Peter Horby, the chair of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), has told Times Radio some level of Covid restrictions may need to remain after the country unlocks in June.

Speaking to Gloria De Piero and Tom Newton Dunn on G&T on Sunday he said:

I think there is going to be a need for continuing some of the measures that we know are not very restrictive but do have a benefit; like hand washing, potentially ensuring good ventilation in indoor spaces, and not having overcrowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation and poor lighting. And we'll have to see about mass gatherings and how we deal with those. There may be in some settings such as large events indoors that there may be a risk that we're not willing to take without some additional measures like prior testing...if we are seeing that transmission is occurring in those settings and it's putting at risk the rest of the population then measures might be needed there.

On the extent to which case numbers can rise without the re-introduction of restrictions:

We won't get down to zero (deaths) for Covid I don't think. But we have to decide as a society what level we're willing to accept. The other dynamic is the health service. The health service has been under enormous pressure. We want to get back to delivering the normal service within the NHS and we don't want to put additional pressure on the NHS. Now the scenarios that have been looked at would suggest that it's very unlikely that we'll get back to a situation where the NHS would be under extreme pressure. But we really need to make sure we do avoid that at all costs.

On whether domestic Covid passports would be a good thing:

Certification is not straightforward. There are various ways you could certify somebody as being not an infectious risk. One is vaccination which requires that there is a good process for certifying whether someone's been vaccinated and there's not any gaming of the system or fraudulent documentation. The other way is demonstrating you've been infected. Again, it's not straightforward because it depends on which test has been used to demonstrate infection...And then you have all the social and ethical issues that we've heard a lot about in the press; to what extent these kinds of measures will actually be discriminatory and lead to two-tier societies. So my personal view is that they do have a value but that it's probably quite restricted and actually their use in terms of international travel may be one of the "use cases", as we call it. That's most justifiable because what we really do want to do is to avoid the importation of new high-risk variants.

And on whether he would be in favour of international holidays this summer:

Personally, I've not booked a holiday overseas because I think, number one, there's a risk that whatever I book won't turn out to be feasible. Number two is I don't want to get stuck overseas somewhere or have to quarantine for two weeks when I come back when the situation changes. The situation in the UK is becoming clear and is stabilising but people have to remember that's not the case elsewhere. The pandemic is still raging globally. And many countries in Europe even are still seeing racing case numbers or having to reintroduce lockdowns. So it's very hard to predict what will happen in the next couple of months and so people have to really take on board that any plans they make now, they are at substantial risk of having to change.