A study prepared by the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (SAGE) suggests that in a reasonable worst-case scenario, a further 85,000 people could die from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom this winter, APA reports citing BBC.
The broadcaster, which claimed to have seen the leaked official document, said the model’s purpose is to calculate excess deaths in England and Wales between July 2020 to March 2021, and by no means represents a prediction.
The official report also assumes that schools would remain open even if lockdowns measures need to be put in place to contain eventual local outbreaks.
"As a responsible government we have been planning and continue to prepare for a wide range of scenarios, including the reasonable worst-case scenario", a UK government spokesperson said, as quoted by the BBC.
The UK, which has recorded 331,644 cases of the novel coronavirus and 41,886 coronavirus-related deaths so far, ranks fifth among the world’s most affected countries by number of fatalities, sitting behind US, Brazil, Mexico and India.