Prof Neil Ferguson is ‘80% sure’ British Covid cases will stay low until autumn, but warns of need for booster jabs
Exactly one year ago, the epidemiologist Neil Ferguson first realised the full extent of the threat that Covid-19 posed to the UK. Calculations by his team at Imperial College London had already revealed that the National Health Service faced being inundated by people suffering from the newly emerged respiratory ailment. Worse news was to follow.
“We knew things were serious in February but around 10 March we began to get really reliable data about hospital admissions – and that is when we recognised the fact that Britain was a lot further into the epidemic than any of us had previously grasped.”