RE: Sobering Thought18 Mar 2020 09:26
LONDON, March 18 (Reuters) - A British professor who was in
Downing Street this week after convincing Prime Minister Boris
Johnson to stiffen his response to the coronavirus outbreak has
self-isolated after developing a persistent dry cough and a
fever.
Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at
Imperial College London, produced a projection of the
coronavirus outbreak for the British government and was in
Downing Street on Monday.
"Sigh. Developed a slight dry but persistent cough yesterday
and self isolated even though I felt fine," Ferguson said.
"Then developed high fever at 4am today. There is a lot of
COVID-19 in Westminster," he said on Twitter.
It was not immediately clear if Ferguson had met Johnson
face to face although the professor attended Johnson's news
conference.
In his study, Ferguson compared the potential impact of the
COVID-19 disease epidemic with the devastating flu outbreak of
1918 and said that with no mitigating measures at all, the
outbreak could have caused more than half a million deaths in
Britain and 2.2 million in the United States.
(Reporting by Kate Holton and Guy Faulconbridge; editing by
Michael Holden)