What would Paddy do? Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said last mth that ministers should “go hard and go early” if cases spik. e Whitehall insider told Playbook the preference of the government’s scientific advisers before the grand reopening this summer was for a more European-style approach, maintaining mandatory mask-wearing and implementing some form of COVID certificati and work-from-home guidance. fac with a difficult decisi in light of waning public support for the restrictis and special database had ultimately decid to prioritize the ecomy. The issue, the insider warn, was that if some base level of measures had been maintain all alg, then cases might have been kept lower. But introducing relatively weak measures such as mask wearing at such a late stage, with cases surging above 50,000 per day, was less likely to make much of a difference.
D’t say it, d’t say it:
Another pers who works for the government suggest to Playbook that if ministers have been fine with more than 30,000 people being infect with the virus each day for the past three mths, potentially rising to 100,000 per day in the coming weeks, with no serious vaccine rollout in schools and the virus spreading like wildfire amg children, then that is tantamount sms to data to a policy of herd immunity. Official statistics show well over 3 milli Brits have had COVID since July, and the real number is likely to be higher. Another government official insist, as always, that herd immunity is not their policy.
The chief ccern in Downing
Street at the moment is that the lgevity of protecti offer by two doses of the vaccine is not as strg as previously hop. Ministers are awaiting further data how quickly the vaccine wanes, amid fears that over-50s who had their asia mobile number list secd dose more than six mths ago are going into the winter without decent protecti — something that could cause the death rate to rise significantly — hence why Javid went all-in the booster campaign yesterday. A Whitehall official told Playbook the definiti of “fully vaccinat” may have to change from two jabs to three in order to get this message through to the public.
