Why it’s the right time to lift plan B restrictions in England
It’s been two months since the first cases of Omicron were identified in the UK. In the weeks after it emerged, modelling scenarios presented to Sage suggested we were facing a situation even worse than last winter, with potentially tens of thousands of hospital admissions and thousands of deaths a day. Thankfully, as we now know, these scenarios did not materialise.
The numbers of admissions and deaths peaked below the level expected in even the best-case scenarios. Pressure on hospitals remained very high, but in most cases, the situation was better than feared. The editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, this week described scientists’ response to Omicron as “a case study in error”. He attributed this to an “over-reliance on mathematical modelling and too little emphasis on the experience of health workers on the frontlines of care”, with insufficient attention paid to the views of South African doctors.
“Following the science” in relation to restrictions was always a misnomer, as “the science” was often uncertain, leading to models that inevitably provided a very wide range of scenarios with different levels of restrictions. Many people are now understandablyconcerned about the potential negative impact of ending plan B restrictions. But again, it is important to look at what’s actually happened to see how effective these restrictions have been – and whether they’ve led to better outcomes.
Plan B restrictions have effectively been in place in Wales and Scotland since July (in England, the government announced the move to plan B on 8 December). A comparison of death rates since 19 July from ONS data shows that England has actually had the lowest death rates. (It is not possible to directly compare case and hospitalisation
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