Coronavirus: Government’s own adviser warns ‘unwise’ to resurrect Eat Out scheme and tier restrictions insufficient

A government scientific adviser has warned Boris Johnson’s tier system is not a “sensible” strategy for controlling coronavirus and suggested a return to policies such as Eat Out to Help Out when England’s restrictions are eased would be “really unwise”.

The remarks from professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), came after the prime minister said the current lockdown will expire on 2 December and outlined a return to the previous tiered approach.

Insisting that “some restrictions” will have to remain in December, Mr Edmunds also predicted the country could “start to come out of this kind of nightmare of this epidemic” around Easter time – a year on from the outbreak of the pandemic in Britain.

While the epidemiologist said that Tier 3 restrictions, the highest level, had “worked to some extent” in slowing the pace of the epidemic and reducing the reproduction number to close to one, he cast doubt on the effectiveness of the lower tiers.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Institute for Government (IfG), he said: “The problem with the tier system is the other tiers don’t slow the epidemic very much.

“So places that are in the lower tiers inevitably end up in the higher tiers, and then if we can slow the epidemic down at the higher level – but that’s not a very good outcome because everyone ends up with high incidence, so it’s not a very sensible way of doing things.

“The lockdown is designed to reduce incidence everywhere and probably will work. After we’ve released from lockdown we will still have to have restrictions in place to stop it coming back. The idea is to bring the incidence down and then hold it at that lower level, rather than the level where it is at now.”

On the chancellor’s high-profile Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which gave diners 50 per cent off meals to a maximum of £10 over the summer, Mr Edmunds suggested he could “not imagine many epidemiologists suggesting that it was a good idea, quite honestly”.

He said: “We’re not just going to be returning to Eat Out to Help Out – I really hope we don’t come December because that would be really unwise. So we have to stay with some restrictions in place and keep the epidemic at a low level.

“Looking further into the new year I do think we will see vaccines coming on stream – whether it’s right in the new year or a bit later I don’t know – but I do think we’ll see vaccines being used and that does change things. That does then allow us then to start to relax a little bit more.”

Professor Edmunds said if vaccines become available the doses will not be available for mass vaccination and the highest risk will be prioritised, adding: “I think we will start to come out of this kind of nightmare of this epidemic from, I don’t know, I would say, I’ve always felt it’s around Easter – around a year in is when we’re really start to come out because we will be vaccinating, we will be able to control the epidemic better.”

He said it was also possible other interventions, such as mass screenings in Liverpool, could also help to reduce incidence and keep it low in the intervening period, but “there was a lot of work to be done to ensure that might be the case”.

Speaking at the No 10 coronavirus press conference on Thursday, Mr Johnson said he believed the four-week lockdown in England – now in its second day – would be enough to have a “real impact” on the spread of the disease and bring down the R rate.

Acknowledging that many people are “anxious, weary and fed up”, he insisted: “These rules will expire and on 2 December we plan to move back to a tiered approach.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel. These are difficult times. While it pains me to have to ask once again for so many to give up so much, I know we can get through this.”

And he added: “If we follow this package of measures in the way that we can and we have done before, I have no doubt people will be able to have as normal a Christmas as possible and that we will be able to get things open before Christmas as well.”