US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has ex­tend­ed his Eu­rope trav­el ban to in­clude Ire­land and the UK. Spain — like Italy and France to vary­ing de­grees — is es­sen­tial­ly on lock­down. But the UK, to the dis­may of many, has tak­en what some have la­beled a com­pla­cent ap­proach.

On Thurs­day, UK Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son, flanked by Patrick Val­lance, the gov­ern­ment’s chief sci­en­tif­ic ad­vis­er (and Glax­o­SmithK­line’s for­mer R&D chief), and the UK’s chief med­ical ad­vis­er Chris Whit­ty, kicked off a press con­fer­ence an­nounc­ing the re­gion was mov­ing on from “con­tain” phase to the “de­lay” pe­ri­od of their ac­tion plan to tack­le the epi­dem­ic on a somber note:

“I must lev­el with you, lev­el with the British pub­lic, many more fam­i­lies are go­ing to lose loved ones be­fore their time.”

These mea­sures are be­ing put in place to de­lay to the peak, and to push the peak down (or flat­ten the curve) — in an ef­fort to re­duce the bur­den on the Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) at any giv­en point and to pro­tect the old and the vul­ner­a­ble when they need it the most, the of­fi­cials em­pha­sized.

“It’s im­por­tant to rec­og­nize it’s not to stop every­body from get­ting it, you can’t do that — it’s not pos­si­ble to stop every­body from get­ting it. And it’s al­so ac­tu­al­ly not de­sir­able, be­cause you want some im­mu­ni­ty in the pop­u­la­tion,” Val­lance said.

Rough es­ti­mates in­di­cate that herd im­mu­ni­ty — a strat­e­gy de­signed to pro­tect at-risk in­di­vid­u­als from in­fec­tion by be­ing sur­round­ed by peo­ple who are re­sis­tant to the dis­ease — to Covid-19 could be achieved if about 60% of the pop­u­la­tion has been in­fect­ed. While test­ing was broad­ly con­duct­ed at the start of the out­break, the UK has now lim­it­ed test­ing to pa­tients that are pre­sent­ing with se­vere symp­toms in hos­pi­tals.

At the con­fer­ence, John­son asked pa­tients with coro­n­avirus symp­toms, how­ev­er mild — ei­ther a new con­tin­u­ous cough or a high tem­per­a­ture — to stay at home for at least a week and ad­vised all cit­i­zens over 70 and those with se­ri­ous med­ical con­di­tions against go­ing on cruis­es and rec­om­mend­ed against in­ter­na­tion­al school trips. More se­ri­ous mea­sures, such as ask­ing cit­i­zens to stay home if some­body in the house­hold has symp­toms will like­ly be tak­en in a few weeks, the of­fi­cials said.

At this junc­ture, the re­gion will not be shut­ting down schools or im­pos­ing a quar­an­tine, the of­fi­cials said, cit­ing undis­closed sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that in­di­cates such mea­sures could do more harm than good at this time.

As of Mon­day, there were more than 1500 con­firmed cas­es of Covid-19 and 35 deaths at­trib­uted to the dis­ease. “Our top num­ber for a rea­son­able worst-case sce­nario … is up to 80% of the pop­u­la­tion be­ing in­fect­ed,” Whit­ty said on Thurs­day.

Re­peat­ed­ly, the of­fi­cials said their ac­tions were guid­ed by the sci­ence — that in or­der to max­i­mize the ben­e­fit of in­ter­ven­tions, tim­ing is cru­cial. When dras­tic mea­sures are tak­en too soon, Whit­ty said, “peo­ple start off with the best of in­ten­tions, but en­thu­si­asm at a cer­tain point starts to flag.”

“It’s im­por­tant to not do things that have a rel­a­tive­ly small ef­fect, but sound sen­si­ble be­cause that puts peo­ple off from do­ing things that re­al­ly mat­ter. It’s al­so im­por­tant to do things in a way that is sus­tain­able be­cause you’re not talk­ing about mea­sures that will there for a week or two,” Val­lance added.

But an open let­ter from 500 be­hav­ioral sci­en­tists, ex­pressed con­cern. “(W)e are not con­vinced that enough is known about ‘be­hav­ioral fa­tigue’ or to what ex­tent these in­sights ap­ply to the cur­rent ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances,” it said. “Such ev­i­dence is nec­es­sary if we are to base a high-risk pub­lic health strat­e­gy on it.”

The UK gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the bur­geon­ing epi­dem­ic has trig­gered a spate of neg­a­tive head­lines with crit­ics pan­ning the ap­proach as in­suf­fi­cient and dan­ger­ous. To add in­sult to in­jury, late on Thurs­day Ar­se­nal Foot­ball Club man­ag­er Mikel Arte­ta an­nounced he had test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, and soon af­ter news that play­ers from oth­er clubs had been in­fect­ed be­gan to sur­face. Even­tu­al­ly, the Pre­mier League said it would sus­pend games un­til April 3, amid oth­er sus­pen­sions across oth­er sport­ing events.

In an open let­ter pub­lished on Sat­ur­day from over 200 sci­en­tists, in­clud­ing PhD stu­dents, in dis­ci­plines rang­ing from math­e­mat­ics to ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (but no re­searchers who study the sci­ence of dis­ease spread) sug­gest­ed the UK gov­ern­ment was do­ing too lit­tle and risk­ing lives in its pur­suit of ‘herd im­mu­ni­ty,’ giv­en that the cur­rent da­ta on in­fec­tions in the UK is in line with the growth curves al­ready seen else­where, such as Italy, Spain, France and Ger­many.

“Un­der un­con­strained growth, this out­break will af­fect mil­lions of peo­ple in the next few weeks. This will most prob­a­bly put the NHS at se­ri­ous risk of not be­ing able to cope with the flow of pa­tients need­ing in­ten­sive care, as the num­ber of ICU beds in the UK is not larg­er than that avail­able in oth­er neigh­bor­ing coun­tries with a sim­i­lar pop­u­la­tion,” they wrote.”Go­ing for ‘herd im­mu­ni­ty’ at this point does not seem a vi­able op­tion, as this will put NHS at an even stronger lev­el of stress, risk­ing many more lives than nec­es­sary.”

Richard Hor­ton, ed­i­tor-in-chief of The Lancet, ac­cused the UK gov­ern­ment of play­ing roulette with the pub­lic. An­oth­er con­cern­ing let­ter al­so sur­faced from the British So­ci­ety of Im­munol­o­gy. An­tho­ny Costel­lo, pro­fes­sor of glob­al health and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don and a for­mer di­rec­tor of ma­ter­nal and child health at the WHO, told the Guardian that mean­while, Chi­na mount­ed a “prop­er” cam­paign to stop the epi­dem­ic in its tracks, as laid out by the WHO — test in­ten­sive­ly, trace con­tacts, quar­an­tine and main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

“They didn’t leave it all to mes­sages and nudge be­hav­ioral meth­ods,” he wrote in a scathing ed­i­to­r­i­al. “With­out an all-out na­tion­al mo­bi­liza­tion for so­cial dis­tanc­ing, are the be­hav­ioral and nudge strate­gies re­al­ly ev­i­dence-based to flat­ten the peak? Or sim­ply based on mod­els? Why are we em­pha­siz­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty now? Does coro­n­avirus in­duce strong herd im­mu­ni­ty or is it like flu, where im­mu­ni­ty re­mains weak and new strains emerge each year? We have much to learn about Covid-19 im­mune re­spons­es.”

Matt Han­cock UK Par­lia­ment

Mean­while, calls for trans­paren­cy on the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vice and mod­els the UK gov­ern­ment is us­ing to make its de­ter­mi­na­tions gath­ered steam.

In an ex­change with Sec­re­tary of State for Health and So­cial Care Matt Han­cock, Sky News jour­nal­ist So­phy Ridge said: “You said that this is based on the best sci­en­tif­ic ad­vice, so why don’t you trans­par­ent­ly pub­lish that ad­vice and the gov­ern­ment’s mod­el­ing … be­cause if you’re so con­vinced you’re fol­low­ing the sci­ence, why don’t you pub­lish it so that peo­ple can take it on their own knowl­edge, rather than trust?”

Han­cock said the da­ta would be pub­lished in the com­ing days, but ap­peared to back away from the goal of herd im­mu­ni­ty, which had been al­lud­ed to by UK of­fi­cials at the press con­fer­ence days ear­li­er.

“Herd im­mu­ni­ty is not our goal or pol­i­cy, it’s a sci­en­tif­ic con­cept. Our pol­i­cy is to save lives and beat this virus,” he said, adding that gov­ern­ment is gear­ing up to ask Britons over 70 to iso­late for “months,” with­in weeks.

The UK gov­ern­ment has since al­so an­nounced it will be con­duct­ing dai­ly brief­in­gs to up­date the pub­lic.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

The Biden administration said Friday that it’ll pump $1.7 billion into various programs to address Covid-19 variants as the original strain of Covid-19 makes up only about half of all US cases today.

Most of those new funds, $1 billion in total, will go to expand genomic sequencing so the CDC, states and other jurisdictions can improve their capacity to identify Covid mutations and monitor the circulation of variants. Back in February, US labs were only sequencing about 8,000 Covid-19 strains per week, although the rate of sequencing has increased substantially since then, the administration said.