Downing Street REJECTS Calls to End Lockdown

• Office for National Statistics report estimates 45,700 people caught Covid-19 each day in England last week 
• The estimate is down 12 per cent in a week, from a high of 51,900 last week, in the first drop in five weeks 
• ONS admitted that the outbreak has ‘stabilised’ after it surged rapidly in September and October

Sam Blanchard, Luke Andrews and Vanessa Chalmers – Daily Mail Nov 6, 2020

Downing Street today refused calls for England’s second lockdown to be cut short and insisted it will run until December 2, despite four more sets of real-world data that show the second wave was already shrinking before the Government pushed the panic button on a drastic month-long shutdown.

Promising figures published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – which runs a massive government surveillance scheme that randomly swabs tens of thousands of people to track the size of the outbreak – suggest that the country’s coronavirus outbreak has shrunk.

It estimated the number of people getting infected each day dropped 12 per cent in a week from 51,900 to 45,700 in the seven-day spell ending on October 31 – the same day Boris Johnson announced the country was heading into another economically-crippling lockdown.

Department of Health figures today confirmed another 355 people have died of Covid-19 across the UK, which was an increase of nearly a third from last Friday, while another 23,287 tested positive, marking a five per cent fall in the week in another sign that infections have stopped rising.

MailOnline’s analysis of Public Health England (PHE) statistics showed more than half of local authorities scattered across England saw their infection rates fall at the end of October. And rates even fell in areas that weren’t in Tier Two or Three lockdowns, suggesting national rules such as the 10pm curfew and rule of six were helping.

Other academics behind a symptom-tracking app are adamant the country’s second wave has already peaked and is over. Even SAGE – Number 10’s advisory panel which spooked ministers into adopting tougher action based on ‘inaccurate’ models – today admitted there is evidence outbreaks are slowing in ‘some parts’ of England.

And the group of top scientists revealed the UK’s R rate has remained at between 1.1 and 1.3 for the second week in a row. It has fallen in five out of seven regions in England, including the North West, North East and the Midlands, where 10million people were already living under the toughest Tier Three curbs.

But amid growing calls on Number 10 to re-evaluate whether there is truly any need for the entire nation to be hit by the toughest rules since the spring, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘The lockdown is for four weeks to the 2nd December. As we have said the trend of hospital admissions are going up.’

It can take coronavirus patients several weeks to fall severely ill, meaning admissions and deaths will continue to spike because cases are still high. But eminent doctors and scientists argue wards are no busier than usual for this time of year and that there is still plenty of space across the nation to treat the infected.

Graphs used by SAGE to make the case for the November lockdown have been torn apart by experts, who showed that one flawed projection that predicted up to 4,000 deaths a day, in particular, was several weeks out of date and unnecessarily frightened the public.

MPs have told MailOnline the use of the data has echoes of the ‘dodgy dossier’ used to take the country to war with Iraq in 2003 and described it as ‘propaganda’ in favour of lockdown. Critics of the blanket intervention even called for experts behind the ‘flawed modelling’ to be held ‘accountable for the economic disaster that will follow’.

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Downing Street REJECTS Calls to End Lockdown