Piers Morgan told 'this is the warning sign' by Professor Devi Sridhar on Good Morning Britain amid spike in Scottish Covid-19 cases

According to health expert Devi Sridhar the “endgame” for coronavirus is a vaccine.

Piers Morgan was told rising cases and deaths across Europe is a “warning sign” for the UK by an Edinburgh professor in public health this morning on Good Morning Britain.

The journalist and TV presenter asked Devi Sridhar, professor of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, if the UK is to expect a surge in coronavirus cases and deaths as seen in France and Spain.

Ms Sridhar said the recent spikes in Europe are a “warning sign” and urged British people to pay more attention to social distancing rules.

“This is the warning sign for each fo us to just be a bit more cautious about our behaviour,” the health professor said, “ and to avoid crowded places and riskier settings.

"Experts are concerned because it does look like the cases are starting to increase and once you reach past a certain point of expediential growth it’s very hard to reverse it without quite hard restrictions, and we’re trying to avoid that.

"We are trying to keep the progress we’ve made, lift lockdown and keep schools open. So I think right now there are some really hard decisions for ministers on what exactly they want to do – where is transmission occurring, can you do targeted measures towards those places? And how do you increase your testing and get your testing working which still seems to be not at where it needs to be?”

Devi Sridhar speaking on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan

When asked what the “endgame” for the coronavirus will be, Ms Sridhar said a vaccine is the most obvious solution, or some kind of treatment to keep people out of hospital, which is making promising progress.

The Edinburgh professor said her advice to young people is not to get infected and ‘think they might be over with it’ because there is risk of reinfection.

She said: "By the next couple of months we’ll have rapid testing in place, and also we have vaccines, several very promising vaccines in trials and hopefully we’ll have a vaccine by 2021.”

“I want to give people optimism. There is so much to be hopeful about. If you are admitted to hospital today, you are much more likely to survive than you were several months ago. We have better and better testing in place.

“My message to young people though is don’t think you can just get infected and think ‘I get it over with’ because you might get it again in the future. Heard immunity is not the way out.”

Yesterday, Sunday, 6 September saw the highest daily jump in coronavirus cases since May with 208 new positive cases being confirmed.

In the Sottish Government’s latest update, data showed no new deaths have been reported. It means the death toll remains at 2,496.

The figures also showed as of Sunday at 2pm, four people were in intensive care with confirmed Covid-19 across the country, while 245 people were in hospital.

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