Professor Graham Medley warned the UK would take longer to spot variants
New Covid variants will take weeks longer to detect when mass testing is scrapped, one of the Government’s chief pandemic advisers warned today.
Professor Graham Medley, chair of No10’s coronavirus modelling group, said he expects a ‘one to two week delay’ in picking up new mutants when the final part of England’s ‘living with Covid’ plan comes into force on April 1.
From that point the country will rely solely on the Office for National Statistics’ weekly Covid survey to monitor community spread of the virus, with only severely vulnerable people eligible for free tests.
Professor Medley said that while the UK was alerted to Omicron by South Africa, and Delta by India, it was Britain’s mass testing programme that helped to pick up the Alpha variant in South East England and warned the world.
And he pointed out the super-transmissible Omicron became dominant in just weeks, a crucial period which may have been missed if it were not for the scheme.
Professor Medley, an infectious disease modeller at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was speaking to MPs on the Commons Science and Technology Committee today.
He is the latest Government adviser to warn against the potential dangers of scrapping mass testing, after two SAGE members – Professor John Edmunds and Professor Matt Keeling – also expressed concern yesterday.
They told MPs that no modelling had been done on the trajectory of the pandemic when all rules are lifted.
But axing mass testing has been welcomed by many scientists and Tory MPs, with the entire testing and tracing scheme thought to cost the taxpayer £2billion a month.
The above graph shows that BA.2 – a sub-variant of Omicron – is now behind 52.3 per cent of all Covid cases in England, the UK Health Security Agency said. The data is based on S-gene testing, and shows the new version is now more prevalent than old Omicron
The above graph from the Sanger Institute shows the proportion of cases down to different Covid variants. It reveals that a more infectious version of Omicron BA.2 (light blue) is now dominant over Omicron (yellow and pink). Other variants including Delta (light green), Alpha (purple) and the old virus (green and red) have now disappeared. The data is up to the week ending February 19 and based on surveillance of genomes
Asked about the impact of relying on the ONS Covid survey, Professor Medley told the Commons committee: ‘For the Omicron wave we knew it was coming because we had an alert from South Africa, for Delta wave we knew it was coming because we had an alert from India.
‘The Alpha wave we didn’t know was coming. That was first detected in Kent and that was seen because of changes in patterns in community testing.
‘There would have been a one or two week delay before (the ONS survey) picked up that variant.’
Free lateral flow and PCR tests will end across the UK from next month, which some medics warns risks outbreaks going undetected.
The ONS survey involves randomly swabbing 100,000 people every fortnight to track the virus and is considered the gold-standard of Covid surveillance.
Professor Medley told the committee the ONS survey was a ‘critical source’ of information, but that its reporting delays could lead to a variant being missed.
The chair of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), which feeds into SAGE, said: ‘We’ve seen with the Omicron wave that you measure the time period from beginning to end in days almost as it develops.
‘So it is unlikely I suspect that the ONS will give us the same level of awareness both in terms of this variant but also we have to worry about future pandemics.
He added: ‘If we cant stand up a response to the next Covid variant then we wont be able to stand up a response to a future pandemic.’
A more infectious version of Omicron, named BA.2, is currently behind the majority of cases in Britain. It is not more deadly than its predecessor.
But SAGE says there is no guarantee the next variant will be less severe, highlighting the importance of staying vigilant of new mutants.
Professor Medley was also asked in the committee about Covid modelling produced to help advise policymakers.
The committee’s modelling has been subject to criticism, with scientists accused of overegging numerous waves of the pandemic.
Most recently it warned there could be 10,000 hospitalisations and 6,000 deaths every 24 hours from Omicron.
In reality, there were never more than 2,000 admissions and 300 fatalities linked to the virus a day.
Professor Medley insisted that while the group produced several different scenarios, the committee never told ministers which one they thought was most likely.
‘We have in the past being asked by the Cabinet Office to say which is going to happen and our immediate response has been we don’t know, and we can’t say.
‘I think that is the right response that we have.’
He said that on one occasion in September 2020 they had suggested a scenario would happen, but were incorrect.
Boris Johnson was given the confidence to abandon mass testing amid weeks of falling cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
He has said the ONS survey — considered as world-leading — will also be reduced when its funding is renewed in April, although is yet to give details.
Medical unions railed against the ‘living with Covid’ plan, warning ministers that ‘now is not the time to take risks’ and saying restrictions should be gradually eased on the basis of evidence.
But the Government pushed ahead amid a cost cutting spree from the Treasury aiming to shave more than £2billion off the budgets.
Covid testing for vaccinated arrivals, which initially helped catch cases entering the country, has also been dropped.
The UK will still offer Covid tests to the over-80s, patients in hospitals and the most vulnerable next month.
It comes as figures showed the UK’s Omicron outbreak may no longer be receding as quickly as it was.
Another 39,000 positive cases and 194 Covid fatalities were recorded across Britain yesterday, dropping just five per cent on last week.
And the number of infected people admitted to hospital each day is flattening out, with 1,015 admissions logged on Friday — just 2.6 per cent fewer than seven days earlier.
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