professor calu m professor calum semple talking to me earlier. trust, and another member of sage, told the andrew marr show on bbc one, that schools might also have to close again if the lockdown in england doesn't bring infections down. the lockdown is extreme. the big difference to the first lockdown is that schools remain open. because we have delayed the onset of this lockdown, it does make keeping schools open harder. we know that transmission, particularly in secondary schools, is high. personally i think this is definitely the lockdown to put in place now, but if that transmission, particularly in secondary schools, continues to rise then that may have to be revisited in the next four weeks in order to get r below one and the epidemic shrinking. sir jeremy farrar. transport for london has secured a £1.8 billion bailout from the government in order to keep tube and bus services running until the end of march next year. the funding will mean tfl can address the financial shortfall caused by a lack of passengers during the pandemic. sadiq kha

professor calum semple is on the government sage committee — and he lives just across the mersey.rful, vibrant city with quite a strong industrial base. the population is culturally very diverse as well. but we sadly do have pockets of some of the greatest multiple deprivation in britain, in fact in europe. calum is a specialist in disease outbreaks — like coronavirus. tell me about liverpool's demographic, and why that feeds into the covid situation? the highest levels of covid activity mirror the areas where there's highest degrees of deprivation. and that's because there's been generations of poor diet, multiple occupancy within houses. viruses, they pick on people. they don't pick on the strong and the healthy. they pick on the weak. calum's own view is the first national lockdown in march ended too soon for the north west. while the south and south east were really at very very low levels, we were still seeing sustained transmission in the community. to put it into context, if this was a fire and the lockdown starved that fire of oxygen, then the fire went out in the south, t

professor calum semple is a virologist at the university of liverpool — and a member of sage the scientificat advises the government. he's been telling me why this lockdown is necessary. we have gone to the line and held off as long as possible. this is what i can see between making this important decision. and nobody wants a lockdown but speaking in medical terms, the country is sick and it needs this medicine, nobody likes the taste of it, but it needs it. if we delayed any longer, we would go past a point of no return where it would become inevitable that the nhs would be overwhelmed by cases of covid, leaving no room for important other treatments such as the car crashes, that people that need intensive care beds after cancer treatment, after major operations. it's clearly a judgment call in the end, when a decision is made to do this. sage were advising this should be done perhaps, some members of sage advising it should be done several weeks ago, the government waited to see its judgment of all the evidence taken together. what difference, i know this is hypothetical, i appreciate tha

professor calum semple is a virologist at the university of liverpool — and a member of sage the scientificies — that advises the government. i should say, professor, you are speaking to us today in your personal capacity, based on your knowledge obviously, as a virologist and the work you have done in this area. therefore, given this is not a sage decision but is a government decision, and you and your collea g u es decision, and you and your colleagues contributed to the debate over it, what do you make of the timing of this? we have gone to the line and held off as long as possible. this is what i can see between making this important decision. and nobody wants a lockdown but speaking in medical terms, the country is sick and it needs this medicine, nobody likes the taste of it, but it needs it. if we delay it any longer, we would go past a point of no return where it would become inevitable that the nhs would become inevitable that the nhs would become inevitable that the nhs would be overwhelmed by cases of covid, leaving no room for important other treatments such as the car crashes t

sense of it all and to answer your questions, we're joined now by gp dr sarahjarvis and professor calum sempletion. we are going to be able to use testing to enable visiting to ca re to use testing to enable visiting to care homes, and starting on tuesday we are pilot piloting 12 care homes to make visiting elderly relatives much safer. what happens in that process ? much safer. what happens in that process? the people who are being tested, there are concerns that if they are asymptomatic —— asymptomatic whether those tests are accurate enough, and if they are not, what is the point? they might be asymptomatic and still have it. the results are not perfect, but they are probably catching at least four out of five people who are in the early stages of incubating the virus, so they could spread it but have not shown symptoms. so that is better than doing nothing, and that is really important. the second step is really important. the second step isa is really important. the second step is a false positive, and that could be as high as one into depending on prevalence, but we can get around that b

we can discuss all the latest developments with calum semple who's a professor of 0utbreak medicine atcting families. it's a devastating, tragic milestone. how do you think we got here? well, that's 50 , 000 do you think we got here? well, that's 50,000 bereavement and hundreds of thousands of people that have suffered illness, many of whom who will have complications and long covid. unfortunately, there still people out there that don't believe that this is a real disease or deny that this is a real disease or deny that there is a second wave. so it is real, and it is a problem, but there is hope. we've got treatment now that death rates and hospital are falling from one in three to one and six, and that's thanks to improved medical care and good clinical research the drug is saving lives, and we have now got a vaccine on the horizon. let's focus on that vaccine. what's your understanding? how would you advise who gets it next? is at the vulnerable? for care homes? the front—line workers? what would your advice be to who gets priority with us? thanks to good research, we have got grea

pilots could be rolled out to millions by christmas. joining me to talk about this is professor calum sempleedicine at the university of liverpool. you have been involved in helping to coordinate all of this. professor semple, thank you forjoining us. liverpool has had some of the highest cases of covid over the last few months and remains a hot spot. how many people are we talking about testing? of everyone eligible to be tested, if they come forward for the initial and follow—up checks? tested, if they come forward for the initial and follow-up checks? we have a population of 500,000 in the liverpool city itself and in the wider region we have nearly 2.25 million people. we are not expecting eve ryo ne million people. we are not expecting everyone to get tested this week but the aim is to get a large proportion of the people in the liverpool central area tested through this pilot. and it is a pilot, it means we are learning as we go about this, but there are some really good news stories here. potentially this will allow people to release from quarantine, particularly contacts of positive