Matt Hancock’s views clearly show a worrying lack of being familiar with from a previous wellness secretary (Sure, the amount of Covid scenarios in the Uk is increasing – but that is no lead to for alarm, 30 June). He misleadingly claims that taking away limitations in the British isles in February did not guide to a surge in instances, hospitalisations and fatalities. Despite the fact that, fortunately, vaccines have substantially decreased the selection of fatalities observed in 2020-21, the British isles even so professional a major wave of conditions and hospitalisations in March-April 2022. The trouble is the sustained force this places on an previously overstretched NHS.
“There are some declaring that the pandemic is not yet in excess of,” states Hancock. Without a doubt, the Planet Overall health Business and most credible experts agree that it is not about. By suggesting that calls for limitations are scaremongering, Hancock misses the issue. Yes, community well being policy should not will need to be alarming, but it must include measures to shield the community and enable lessen transmission, this sort of as totally free Covid testing, greater sick fork out, superior air flow in faculties and workplaces, and the reintroduction of masks in professional medical settings.
Dr Simon Williams
Swansea College
Matt Hancock is right to applaud the incredible hard work associated in having so several of us vaccinated. Even so, to assess Covid to flu is improper. The effect of Covid is felt not only in people who have been significantly sick or bereaved, but also by individuals of us who are chronically sick or caring for another person with lengthy Covid. To suggest that we are now in a posture where by Covid is no lengthier a threat is insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people whose life continue on to be utterly devastated by this condition.
Verity Gibson
Southsea, Portsmouth
It is disingenuous to assert that we can depend on antibodies and vaccines to manage the virus. As a triple-vaccinated trainer who caught Covid in March, I have been unable to return to perform still owing to very long Covid. I, and a lot of others operating all-around me, caught Covid in just 4 months of our third vaccine dose. No one would like more lockdowns, but disregarding a virus that can and does evade immunity is additional probable to lead us there. Instead, we could have an warn process, as they do in spots such as New York, which triggers preventive action these types of as mask donning and tests when community transmission will increase we could enhance indoor ventilation in community spaces, as in Belgium. Less than this governing administration, we are sleepwalking into however one more wave of sickness.
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Masks, exams, isolation if unwell and ill pay are not limits – they are mitigations that safeguard the population from sickness. This untrue dichotomy of “nothing or lockdown” wants to quit. There is a prosperity of protective actions in amongst (as nicely as vaccination) that a responsible authorities would be encouraging folks to utilize. Alternatively, vulnerable persons are remaining even now shielding and every person else is envisioned to take repeated Covid infection as a section of existence.
Jude Geddes
Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex
I concur with Matt Hancock that vaccines are the way ahead. It’s possible he has within knowledge on wellness department planning? Can he inform me in which I can get the annually vaccine he endorses? The federal government has not invited me to book just one yet. Am I missing something?
Dr Jon Scales
Wivenhoe, Essex
