Stepping into the Unknown
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Some are calling it Freedom Day. Others are much more circumspect. The lifting of Covid restrictions on 19th July in England is, to a certain extent, an experiment. The UK has one of the best vaccination rates in the world and far fewer people are now dying from coronavirus. But it also has one of the fastest rising infection rates. The development of the vaccines so quickly was, undoubtedly, an extraordinary scientific feat. It did also lead some scientists to predict that we would be through this pandemic by now. So why hasn't that happened? And what do we know about the risks involved in lifting restrictions now? Joining David Aaronovitch in the Briefing Room are:
Azra Ghani, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London Tom Chivers, Science journalist and author Linda Bauld, Professor of public health at Edinburgh University Thomas Hale, Associate Professor in Public Policy, University of Oxford
Producers: John Murphy, Ben Carter and Kirsteen Knight Studio Manager: Graham Puddifoot Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Oronovich. The briefing room is the virtual space where a big |
| 0:05.1 | current topic gets together with you, me and the top experts for 28 minutes. This week, |
| 0:12.2 | Freedom Day beckons for England. But has anyone told the virus? The pandemic is not over, said the Prime Minister this week. |
| 0:24.7 | And indeed, there's a big increase in infections. |
| 0:27.7 | Even so, most remaining COVID restrictions are being lifted in England on Monday. |
| 0:32.4 | Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are easing their rules at later dates. |
| 0:36.5 | Is all this one big risk that we're taking? |
| 0:40.0 | And how can we know? |
| 0:41.8 | Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:48.3 | Last December I recall, there were some very well-qualified and sober people |
| 0:52.4 | predicting that with effective vaccines being rolled out, |
| 0:56.1 | life could get back to normal by spring. It's July now, and it didn't happen. Why is that? |
| 1:03.4 | First up in the briefing room is Azra Garny, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. |
| 1:10.5 | Azragani, why are we still in this pandemic? |
| 1:14.7 | Well, we have to remember that even though it feels a very long time since COVID came, |
| 1:18.5 | we've actually only lived with this new virus for around 18 months and we're still learning a lot |
| 1:23.0 | about how it's spread. So whilst we've experienced, of course, two severe waves, and we may well be |
| 1:28.2 | well into a third wave now over the summer, the virus is continuing to mutate, it's circulating |
| 1:33.6 | globally, and over time we'll gradually move to something that's more stable, but how long that |
| 1:39.4 | will take is really very uncertain. Now, along with quite a lot of other people who thought |
| 1:43.3 | themselves well informed, I had imagined that when we got to this level of vaccination, essentially, |
| 1:48.5 | the threat to the NHS would be finished and we'd be out of this. And that hasn't really |
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