School Covid surge pushes Scotland to brink of lockdown

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England and Wales have been told to brace for a Scotland-like surge in Covid cases in the coming weeks after infections more than doubled north of the border. 

Daily cases in Scotland, where classrooms went back last Monday, shot up to 3,613 on Friday compared to 1,542 the previous week. Today there were 4,925 cases, up almost 50 per cent on the previous week. 

Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday she would not hesitant to put the country into another lockdown if hospital admissions start to trend upwards as a result.

Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in medicine at the University of East Anglia, warned that England and Wales could ‘certainly’ expect a similar spike when classrooms return next week.

Latest figures from Public Health England’s (PHE) surveillance report showed secondary school children have the highest rate of infection in the country despite there still being a week before schools open for the Autumn term. 

People aged 10 to 19 in England and Wales had a case rate of 616.5 per 100,000 people in the seven days to August 22, up a third week-on-week from 472.5.

There are now fears there could be an explosion in cases when schools return as it coincides with colder weather — a known risk factor for Covid cases — and there is the suggestion that vaccine immunity could wane in some people.

Hospital admissions in Scotland are still stable, with 51 daily admissions on average on August 18. But there is a lag between cases and hospitalisations due to the time it takes to fall unwell.

The risk of a fresh wave has renewed debate about whether to vaccinate all children aged 12 to 15, as is being done in several countries including the US, France, Canada and Italy. 

Professor Hunter said that infection rates would start to rise after schools returned in England on Wednesday September 1, which is just a week away. 

He told the Eastern Daily Press: ‘Infection rates will increase once schools are back, certainly after the first two weeks.  

‘The issue is how much that translates into severe disease and hospitalisations. That is the big uncertainty at the moment.’

 

He added: ‘Some people are pointing to what happened last autumn but it is not going to happen like that this time, partly because of the vaccine but also because a lot of people are still immune from having had the infection and recovering.

‘So it’s a bit uncertain what will happen. I suspect case numbers will go up and hospitalisations will increase but probably not as dramatically as we saw last year.’

Professor Tim Spector, the epidemiologist who heads the Covid symptom study, said ‘as kids head back to the classrooms, there’s a good chance cases will continue to rise from here.’

Daily Covid deaths in the UK are already at their highest level in five months, with more than a hundred being recorded every day on average. At the start of August, they averaged 75 a day.

And hospital admissions are continuing to climb with almost 900 people visiting wards across the country because of the disease every day.

But these are still a fraction of the levels in previous waves when more than 1,000 people were dying from the virus every day. Last time there were 33,000 Covid cases a day, there were 1,348 deaths and 3,000 admissions.

Almost nine in ten adults have already received one dose of the Covid vaccine, or 47.7million people, and almost eight in ten have got both doses, or 42million.

Scientists have always been honest and said no vaccine is perfect, and that they will not be able to stop Covid infections happening in every case. But they drastically slash the risk of hospitalisation and death.

This summer England’s Covid cases followed Scotland’s trajectory during the Euro 2020 football tournament.

Scotland’s spiked to then-record levels at more than 3,000 a day by the end of June after their national team was knocked out of the competition in the group stages. 

At the time, cases were doubling every week and health chiefs had already linked nearly 2,000 Covid infections to fans watching the matches — two thirds of whom travelled to London to watch the crunch tie with England in June.

And England’s Covid cases quickly followed suit amid the Three Lions’ success during the tournament, as the team got to the final which was played at Wembley stadium. 

Infections in the country spiked to more than 50,000 in mid-July, shortly after the final was played. It takes at least three days for someone who is infected with the virus to start suffering the tell-tale symptoms.

Hundreds of thousands of Three Lions fans were seen watching the match in and around pubs across the country yesterday with scant regard for social distancing.

Nicola Sturgeon has warned Scots could be dragged back into tougher coronavirus restrictions amid the biggest surge in cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

The First Minister yesterday raised the prospect of reintroducing some curbs despite the successful vaccine rollout.

She also said that existing regulations, including mandatory face masks and limits on capacities at major events, are likely to be extended again next week.

Ms Sturgeon told businesses to allow staff to work from home if they can in an effort to get a grip on the latest surge in cases.

But business leaders urged the First Minister not to take the country back to ‘economic hibernation’, while opponents urged her to stop trying to cling on to control over people’s lives and focus on economic recovery.

Scotland already has more Covid restrictions than other parts of the UK but cases appear to be rising faster. The number of confirmed cases has more than doubled in the past week and hit a record high of 4,323 yesterday – although half of all new cases are people under the age of 25 who are least likely to have been fully vaccinated.

It comes as scientists come to blows over vaccinating children against Covid as the NHS put plans in place to jab secondary school pupils without their parent’s consent.

Health service bosses have told trusts to be ready to roll out jabs to all 12 to 15-year-olds in two weeks, in a sign the country is edging closer towards routinely jabbing teenagers.

The move has been backed by several high profile experts who have warned the virus will ‘rip through’ schools when children return to classes next week.

Latest figures from Public Health England’s (PHE) surveillance report showed secondary school children have the highest rate of infection in the country despite schools not even being back yet. 

Children have only a small risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid and a vanishingly small chance of death, while Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines are associated with ultrarare cases of heart inflammation in young people.

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, said the risks of side effects currently outweighs the dangers posed by Covid itself for most children.

And he added ‘as much as half’ of all teens would already have had the virus and therefore have natural immunity and not need a jab. 

Experts believe the virus will never fully disappear but it could become endemic in the future — so having a generation of children with natural immunity would help prevent cases spiralling later down the line.

Professor Hunter added that vaccinating children would be purely for the benefit of adults, which could be seen as ethically ‘dubious’.