Intended for healthcare professionals
Rapid response to:
Practice
Coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19): a guide for UK GPs
BMJ 2020; 368 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m800 (Published 06 March 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;368:m800Read our latest coverage of the Coronavirus outbreak
On 12 March 2020 Public Health England published new guidance to the public for people with confirmed or possible covid-19 infection. The article and infographic will be updated once new guidance for primary care is published.
Infographic available
Click here for a summary infographic, updated on 17 Mar 2020
Rapid Response:
Origins of the crisis - crying wolf?
Dear Editor
I believe one of the key things which has gone wrong is that we have been exaggerating influenza mortality. For instance, winter 2017-18 was considered a very bad year for flu mortality - but we had only 3,454 ICU admissions in the UK and 372 deaths (140 beds, 14 deaths a week?) And we told ourselves we had 16,000 deaths or 50,000 deaths which would have equated to 150,000 or 500,000 ICU admissions [1]. Of course, we were never anywhere near that and the service was at full stretch. Now we are reaping the whirlwind.
[1] John Stone, ‘ Government exaggerates flu mortality again: why cannot the public be trusted with the truth?’, 5 December 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6
Competing interests: AgeofAutism.com, an on-line daily journal, concerns itself with the potential environmental sources for the proliferation of autism, neurological impairment, immune dysfunction and chronic disease. I receive no payment as UK Editor