INSIGHT
CLIMBING OUT OF LOCKDOWN By Sir Paul Beresford, BDS. MP
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ockdown restrictions in the UK were announced by Boris Johnson, Prime Minister on 23 March 2020. This was a result of the increasing awareness that the United Kingdom was about to be hit by a pandemic caused by a totally new and highly dangerous virus. There is increasing evidence that China initially may have covered up the existence and progress of this deadly disease much earlier than the world became aware of it. There is also high suspicion that the virus may have been accidentally linked from a research laboratory in Wuhan. The latest suspicion is of local Wuhan officials cover-up denying the brief chance to stop the virus in Wuha. At that point little was known about the Coronavirus except that it is highly dangerous for many humans. Virtually every nation introduced varying degrees of restrictions on a normal life as this horrendous virus progressively spread from Wuhan in China as a pandemic throughout the world. Inevitably there has been much discussion, particularly in the media, on our local current Lockdown policy and its implementation. Every conceivable position has been argued, from Lockdown should not yet be used, to Lockdown began too late, that Lockdown should be released immediately - plus everything in between. Consequently, I looked with particular interest to the Imperial College London study which has assessed the impact of Lockdown on 11 European countries including ours, up to the beginning of May 2020. These researchers used sophisticated modelling to project how many deaths there would be if there had not been Lockdown.
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At the beginning of May approximately 130,000 people had died from Covid in those 11 European countries. Of course, this is risen horrifically since. However, the Imperial study estimates that without Lockdown 3.2 million people would have died by 4th May if these countries have not imposed measures such as closing businesses and telling people to stay at home. The study estimates the Lockdown to have saved around 3.2 million lives at that time, including 470,000 United Kingdom, 690,000 and 630,000 in Italy. Inevitably there will be much discussion and argument when finally, we may be able to push this disease off our landscape. There will be endless attempts by opponents of the Conservative Government to emphasise areas where we could have done better and underplay/ ignore successes. Of course learning from the past, to ready ourselves for the next occasion is good management. South Korea managed to successfully battled Sars and use that experience to their benefit in the attack against coronavirus. Japan where greetings generally involve a faceto-face bow at perhaps 1 metre distance had less community spread than some of our European neighbours where the obligatory on both cheeks peck clearly increased community spread. The comparison that rankles with me as a dual NZ/UK passport holder is New Zealand. I noted at least one of the weekend papers there was New Zealand Government criticism of this country. Jacinda Arhern, the Labour Prime Minister, who introduced very harsh Lockdown on 19th March has been very successful in limiting the Covid toll to just 1504 cases and 22 deaths. A commendable achievement. However such simple comparisons are heavily flawed. New Zealand is essentially a country of rural settlements of low-density suburbs where social distancing was not too difficult. Covid arrived in New Zealand the middle of summer when viruses are at the lowest chance spreading. Also New Zealand is self-sufficient in food hence has relatively little international supplies - New Zealand has 700 international flights a week whereas Britain has many more than that in a single day plus trains and ferries arriving from other European countries constantly, especially from Spain and Italy who was suffering from
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the virus before it hit the UK. Arhern has elections later this year and will no doubt be returned on the wave of the New Zealand Lockdown success. Unfortunately for the country most voters seem relatively blissfully unaware of the huge cost per head of population of the financial support Arhern has given, along the lines of most European countries including the UK but then some! New Zealand will need a National ( Conservative) Government to return to economic sanity which is not helped by the continuing border closure causing the destruction of its international tourism business which constitutes a considerable proportion of its GDP. I am a very part-time private only dentist undertaking, when Parliament allows, a few hours of practice a week. Like every other dental surgery in England, whether NHS, mixed, or private I closed my doors at the request of Sara Hurley, the English Chief Dental Officer at the beginning of Lockdown. From the limited knowledge we had of the transference of coronavirus this was a glaring and obvious step. Latterly there have been criticism of this action, from some private dentists and private dentists groups. These have been based on the belief that the Chief Dental Officer had responsibility for NHS dentistry only. It is correct that she has responsibility for paying rations of NHS dental contractors but her role in dental health is very much broader. As the NHS England website puts it: “The Office of the Chief Dental Officer England represents the head of the dental profession in England, providing system wide professional and clinical leadership, by setting the strategic vision for England’s oral health.” It is often said particularly by the BDA, that dentistry is treated as a Cinderella health service in England. I cannot but agree although I noticed that Sara Hurley’s drive to “put the mouth back in the body” slowly but steadily gaining traction at the Department of Health all the way up to the Secretary of State For most dental practices Lockdown has been a financial disaster. Sara somehow managed to persuade the Treasury that partial NHS payments to NHS dentists was appropriate.
