Can a 2-Week ‘Circuit Breaker’ Lockdown Curb COVID-19? The U.K. May Be About to Try

The coronavirus is having its way with the United Kingdom—a fact that is told starkly by the numbers. The 21st most populous country in the world, the U.K. is 11th in total number of COVID-19 infections—and climbing fast. Its daily infection rate is doubling every seven to eight days in some regions, more people are now hospitalized there than on March 23 (when the country went into general lockdown), and in some regions, hospital beds and intensive care units are at 90% capacity. With cold weather coming on and flu season beginning, things look darker still. “We could sleep-walk into a long and bleak winter,” warned Labor Party leader Sir Keir Starmer in an address last week. The answer, hard as it may be to sell to a COVID-weary public, is another lockdown—sort of. British epidemiologists and policymakers are increasingly calling for what’s known as a “circuit-breaker” strategy: a short, sharp lockdown of just two to three weeks to get ahead of the virus and, if nothing else, buy a little time. The idea’s advocates argue that it has multiple advantages: It hits the brakes hard and fast on the pandemic’s spread; it eases the pressure on the National Health Service (NHS) and its hospitals; and it imposes restrictions with a known end date, making compliance among the general public far likelier than it was during the earlier quarantine period, which ran on indefinitely. “The biggest difficulty people have is t...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news