I've been talking to Sergio Bruce ow he
is an expert in response and emergency
operations at the European center for
disease prevention control and I asked
him if he thought the measures that
Italy had put in place were
proportionate if you put the things into
context and see what has happened in
China with their drastic measures it is
something that it's not unreasonable and
therefore I want to ask you how close do
you think how close or otherwise you
think the UK is to being in the same
situation as Italy
well the UK is in the situation Italy
was a couple of weeks ago two or three
weeks ago but the UK has an advantage
because the UK saw what has happened in
South Korea and Italy sold is still time
to do something more and quicker than in
Italy so you think the government here
should move to the social distancing
measures the the banning of large public
gatherings and so on and if it doesn't
and if it doesn't you get in the UK the
same situation that there is in Italy
now seriously thousands and thousands of
positive cases you believe if we don't
do that here yeah I'm sure that you know
now the figure is around 200 it if I'm
not mistaken Italy went from 200 mm in
10 days and that's how this disease is
working so therefore I wouldn't expect
without any measures to this situation
to be very different how long does the
government have here to to implement
those measures to stop it spreading in
the way we have seen it doing in Italy
not very long time I would say a few
days really you know we are in an
exponential curve so the cases are
doubling very quickly so you don't
really have a lot of
time now you may see you know hundreds
but very soon if you don't do anything
the thousands will come extremely
quickly so I would say days the
government's got an emergency meeting
today perhaps today would be the day to
bring in those social distancing
measures in your view that would be
welcome I think that would be a good
idea and what specifically are you
thinking the British government should
be implementing here to stop us becoming
the next Italy well you know we
published our risk assessment last week
we have different scenarios and the
scenario UK is in is either the scenario
two or three were the cases are still
raising exponentially but the community
transmission is not completely
recognized so I think that now the UK is
in the situation we described in the
scenario three of our risk assessment we
very soon the community transmission
being recognized
it looks like also that the UK is
exporting some cases so this is the
right time to act okay
and by Act are you saying people should
work from home football matches should
be played behind closed doors or are you
talking about locking down whole towns
and cities locking down all down in
cities it's not something that is easily
feasible in the Western world but the
social distancing the care of not having
big meetings of people the possibility
of working from home when possible the
diminishing the chances of contacts
between people you know washing hands
don't shake hands
all these distance people from people
and makes the transmission less easy so
that is what can happen locking down
has happen in China I don't think it's
very feasible in places like the UK or
Italy for that matters you know even in
Italy the quarantine that is imposed let
people move to go to the shops let me
people move to go to work when
absolutely necessary so it's not a
Chinese lockdown it is a lowering of the
chances of meeting other people do you
think the UK has been slow in terms of
implementing measures the European
nations I don't really think so
it is a very difficult situation to read
because the increase from very no a
handful cases to hundreds and thousands
it's it's very quick and I I really
don't think it was possible for the
government's to react quicker it would
have been very difficult to explain to
the population drastic measures without
having at least some cases that can be
shown on the map really after practice
as you know Britain is due to leave the
early warning and response system which
has helped coordinate the response to
the virus and played a role certainly
played a very vital role during the bird
flu outbreak what do you think of that
it's a pity the EWS particularly were in
coordinating and exchange the
information inside Europe recently
Switzerland asked to get into the system
and of course the request was granted so
losing the possibility to exchange
information with the UK on the EWS would
be for us quite a loss I wonder finally
if you think the the numbers of dead in
Italy from Corona
are what the UK can expect without
measures
yes I think that the percentage of
people dying from coronavirus wouldn't
change that much between Italy and the
UK thank you very much for your time