Experts: Britain may witness 120,000 deaths in a second wave of corona this winter

Health experts said that next winter, Britain may face a second wave of corona virus that will be more deadly, and may kill up to 120,000 people over a period of nine months in the worst scenarios, according to Reuters.

This came in a report by the British Academy of Medical Sciences published today, Tuesday, and Stephen Holgate, a university professor who participated in preparing the report, stated that with the possibility of Covid-19 spread in the winter as people spend more time together in closed places, a second wave of the pandemic "may be more dangerous." From the wave we are witnessing now. "

"This is not a prediction but a possibility ... deaths may be higher with the emergence of a new wave of Covid-19 this winter, but the risk of this happening can be reduced if we take action immediately," he told an online news conference.

The current number of deaths of Covid-19 disease in the United Kingdom is about 45,000, the highest in Europe, and a Reuters statistics based on official sources of data indicated that more than 55,000 people in all died, including suspected cases.

The Academy of Medical Sciences indicated that there is a high degree of uncertainty about how the Corona epidemic will evolve, but it has set the "rational worst scenario" where the number of reproductive infections or reproduction of the virus, denoted by the English letter (R), will increase to 1.7 from September 2020 onwards.

The letter (R) indicates the average number of people who will be infected with HIV from one person and currently ranges between 0.7 and 0.9 in the UK and the daily numbers of infections and deaths are decreasing.

The letter "R" is a term used in epidemiology in reference to the multiplication of the virus and its transmission to new people and represents a method for assessing the disease's ability to spread.

"The estimates derived from the models indicate that 119,900 people will die in hospitals between September 2020 and June 2021, which is more than twice the number that died during the first wave of the virus," the academy said in its report.

Ann Johnson, Vice President of the Academy, said that a bad season for winter flu, along with the accumulation of a large number of patients suffering from other diseases and chronic conditions, will increase the great pressure on health services, which confirms the need to prepare now.

"Covid-19 has not gone," she added. "We need to do everything we can to stay healthy this winter."