Public health professor believes up to 600,000 Brits will die from coronavirus

8 March 2020, 09:30 | Updated: 8 March 2020, 10:13

Andrew Castle had the professional help of a professor in public health to get real about coronavirus projections

Crunching the numbers coming from Public Health England, Professor Jimmy Whitworth who is Professor of international public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine joined Andrew Castle to break down the possibilities of a coronavirus epidemic in the UK.

The professor was quoting the figures of Chris Whitty who believed that about 20% of the UK population will contract coronavirus, but he believed it to me more. "I think it's more like a third to a half", the public health expert believed.

After the claim, Andrew Castle began to crunch the numbers, based off the figures from Public Health England he concluded that "6 million will have to be hospitalised", to which Professor Whitworth agreed.

"i don't like the sound of that at all"

"we think between one and two percent of those infected will die"

"the mortality of this will be about twice what we see in a bad flu year"

"I don't like the sound of that at all" Andrew said. His own worry lay in the belief that the public are being made panic by authorities and the media but the claims by the professor would definitely scare people, Andrew thought.

"We think between one and two percent of those infected will die" the professor stated, to which Andrew translated to around 300,000 to 600,000 people according to the opinions of Professor Whitworth, to which he again agreed with the figures.

Summing up the maths, the professor claimed that when coronavirus passes "the mortality of this will be about twice what we see in a bad flu year".