Coronavirus Infections: 1 Million Soon

Former British Health secretary Jeremy Hunt says there will be over one million coronavirus infections in Britain by next week due to the rapid spread of the disease. He cites the current UK death figures which suggest the real number of infections is over 300 thousand already.

He urges the country to ramp up testing and get a better idea of the real number of infected patients and identify other clusters of infections. Aggressive testing has been a key part of why the virus hasn’t spread in South Korea or Taiwan at the same rate as Italy or other European countries, and this testing could help the UK avoid an explosion in cases.

People unable to get tested could also have a false sense of security and mistake a mild case of the virus for a common cold, unknowingly spreading it to an older person at higher risk. It is for these reasons that expanded testing would help slow the outbreak and give authorities a better picture of where efforts to combat the virus would be best used.

Testing allows medical professionals to retrace the steps of someone with the virus and alert anyone they came into contact with. These measures are critical as they allow the chain of transmission to end before that person can go on to infect another two or three people, each of whom would infect two or three more in turn.