Dr. Samuel McConkey:

Yes. The definitive results from a study based in many centres in the UK convincingly showed that a steroid called dexamethasone, which is cheap and widely available, decreases by about 20% or 30% the bad outcomes in people who need oxygen. We have also got better at giving high flow oxygen and nasal oxygen on the wards through the past six to seven months and that may keep some patients out of ICU. The reason we are not seeing the huge numbers in ICU yet is just that this growth phase is happening at a much slower pace than what we had back in February and March. It takes several weeks for people to get really sick with adult respiratory distress syndrome and the ICU lung failures, and then it takes another few weeks for them to die.

There is a delay in seeing that. We see the cases first, the ICU admissions a few weeks later and then the deaths later again. I am very pessimistic that that will happen.