How Likely is a Second wave?
Paul Kirkham, Professor of cell Biology and Head of Respiratory Disease Research Group at Wolverhampton University Dr Mike Yeadon, former CSO and VP, Allergy and Respiratory Research Head with Pfizer Global R&D and co-Founder of Ziarco Pharma Ltd Barry Thomas, Epidemiologist Contents Executive Summary Background Mortality and critical care A complete event of the pandemic Epidemic outbreaks Population susceptibility Immunity threshold The PCR Test Expectations of a second wave Spain and France References Executive Summary Evidence presented in this paper indicates that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic as an event in the UK is essentially complete, with ongoing and anticipated challenges well within the capacity of a normalised NHS to cope. The virus infection has passed through the bulk of the population as a result of wholly natural processes and evidence indicates that in the UK and other heavily infected European countries the spread of the virus has been all but halted by a substantial reduction in the susceptible population. This has occurred because the level of infection required to introduce enough immunity into the population to reduce the reproduction number (R) permanently below 1 occurred at markedly lower infection rates and loss of life than had been initially anticipated. The evidence presented in this paper indicates that there should be no expectation of a large scale...
