As the country decides how to unlock, the government is discussing possible strategies of ongoing social isolation, the social bubble, lockdown scenarios, and possible quarantine with forced removals from homes or care homes. An article in The Guardian, on April 30^th quoted, “Social bubbles’ of small groups could be early step out of UK lockdown”, the government is considering “allowing” small family groups to meet, with a maximum of 10 people per group. Over 70’s and the vulnerable will be encouraged to keep isolating. However, experts, following the WHO’s recommendations are suggesting a more “rigorous” quarantine of new cases, based on “test, track and isolate.”

That would presume that with increased testing – and it’s not clear how many would be tested – all new cases testing positive would be isolated. This could include being quarantined even if you are not suffering any symptoms. This would require an “army of contact tracers” for “mass testing” in order to have a policy of “test, track and trace”. Some experts are suggesting a tougher isolation response with 14 days of quarantine for all positive cases, and even forced quarantine in state facilities as China has done. The government is grappling with these options, including moving elderly people in nursing homes who have tested positive into the under used Nightingale hospital in London, and mandating longer isolation times.

One expert quoted said, “Once we’re back to small numbers we cannot afford to allow ‘rogue citizens to do what they like’. There are undoubtedly people in the UK who ignore guidance. Not many, but some. A person like that could ultimately be responsible for going into a care home and introducing the infection, causing 20-30 residents to die over the next month. We’ve got to take that seriously.”

The government is therefore looking at “alternative housing arrangements” for those who may infect vulnerable people, relaxing lockdown in some areas while tightening it in others, in order to avoid a possible second peak of the virus. There could be tougher quarantining requirements of people coming into the UK, something that might have been useful if it had been done back in February. The imposition of directives to wear face coverings in enclosed public spaces; the creation of “social bubbles” by encouraging some services back to work, at staggered start times and with social distancing; and opening schools with smaller class sizes and different opening hours.

The government said that it “will have to take decisions based on the scientific evidence and be guided by the fact we are not going to do anything which could lead to the virus being able to spread exponentially again.”

This is a potentially dangerous strategy, where some kind of social control will become a permanent feature of life in the UK. The same scientists the government is listening to, grossly overestimated the numbers of cases in the first place. The idea of a second wave of the virus is at this point simply a projection. Evidence so far shows that most countries are moving through a single bell curve, and cases will now diminish in severity as the most vulnerable have already been affected. The number of positive cases will increase due to more testing but that tells us nothing about the severity of COVID19. The important figures are the mortalities and intensive care intakes. The idea that a whole country can be virtually quarantined to stop a virus spreading is questionable and there is no real scientific consensus on this.

The current number of mortalities should make us question whether the best thing to do to mitigate continued social and economic consequences would be to simply lift the lockdown over 1-2 weeks and allow things to go back to normal as soon as possible. The government’s hesitant strategy of releasing the lockdown may only serve to drag things out and compound the already serious consequences of shutting down the country. The prospect of a need for ongoing surveillance of the people, using an army of contact tracers scouring the country via their phone apps, looking for people infected with the virus and reporting “rogue citizens”, is likely to instil even more fear and paranoia into an already traumatized populace.