Like to hear that you saw our Yes.

I think we're getting on top of what would the numbers be that will persuade you that we were waiting, but letting entering safer ground?

Well, I think, actually, the thing which would I would most like to hear is that the majority of people who get this have no symptoms at all.

And we have no way of telling whether that's the case at the moment.

But what we are seeing at the moment is an increase in numbers around the world on I think we have to be realistic about this and start planning on the basis that an epidemic is likely to occur globally.

And if it happens globally, it'll happen in the UK Why do you suppose earlier today, Professor, we've been taking a look.

Att.

Some of our colleagues in Europe and we note that in France there's 212 cases and tragically four fatalities in Germany.

187 current cases to critical Italy.

You'll be aware.

3000 odd cases, 79 fatalities relatively At this time relatively of this time, the UK seems referring better.

Why might that be?

I think it's a little too reasons.

I think part of it and we have to be honest about this is going to be that we have Bean lucky on not having some importations of people missed, but a lot of it down to incredibly hard work by any chest are on public health England staff who've been identifying cases really early on, then isolating them.

So in a way, that and then following their changes of contact in a way that means that it then doesn't get into the community.

This is, uh this is a very good way both of containing it if it is containable, but also slowing down the spread.

So if we delay it and that is very important for us, do face mosques help prevent Corona virus.

The face masks are useful only if people actually has a corona virus or another kind of inspection.

If they have it, they could be useful.

Thio reduce the possibility of someone passing it on because they catch the droplets and a sneeze or cough.

But they are not effective in reducing it significantly.

If you just wear them on your well, your girl professor, I note in the U.

S.

Pharmaceutical companies are preparing to move to human trials of a vaccine next month.

April?

Where is if you're aware?

Where is the UK with that?

So the U.

K has some of the best vaccine scientists in the world, and there are many people here who are also studying vaccines.

But I think the thing for for your listeners to remember is the early trials are the will would do very quickly.

But you then need to do much larger trials to check whether they're safe, and then you need to work out a way of safely manufacturing it on.

I think everybody who understands vaccine vaccine production and testing knows this will take a least a year, even if we have a very good vaccine that enters the trial process at the moment.

How comfortable are you with what's happening at British airports?

I note that in other countries they have scanners, they have tests, and here currently, unless the situation's changed, we seem rather more relaxed, Professor.

So what we've done is followed very much what the scientific evidence said we should do on.

We've looked at a ll the things which you can do, including things like stopping flights.

And what that demonstrated was, it made almost no difference.

It would do its result.

We stopped all flights to China that would have delayed things by probably at most five days.

Andi.

It's notable that, for example, Italy, which is the country which did ban flights and there was much more aggressive, is actually the country in Europe which had the most cases.

So we have followed the science on this on that implied that our efforts are much better directed elsewhere.

As I said at the beginning, it's finding the cases as they occurred on, then isolating following their chains off contact on what's your recommendation concerning you and your colleagues recommendations concerning schools.

So at the moment, we are clearly recommending that investors are operational reasons, but a school should close, and that's entirely up to individual schools.

We are not recommending closing schools at this point in time.

And if we look last eight other pandemics, the Spanish flu back in 1918 which, as I recall from history lessons, actually killed more people than World war.

It was that villain.

What lessons have been learned through the years and swine flu and Asian flu and others that could be employed here.

So we're we're obviously in a much better place.

Thio conduct combat epidemics now than we were at the point.

We had the that particular through pandemic, one of the things that happened in that pandemic with a lot of people, the second bacterial infection.

And we have antibiotics we didn't have before on we have much better and medical treatments.

So and we also understand epidemics much more than we did at that point.

So we are much more able thio to lay them on to reduce the peak of the curve by variety of interventions.