At least 59,000 lives have already been saved in 11 European countries due to the social distancing measures introduced to stem the spread of Covid-19, new modelling suggests. According to the analysis, 370 deaths have already been averted in the UK - where a nationwide lockdown came into effect just one week ago - while Italian interventions have saved 38,000 lives to date. But the study also shows that the continent remains a long way from developing “herd immunity”, whereby the vast majority of people have caught, recovered and become immune to the coronavirus. The modelling, published yesterday by Imperial College, London, analyses the impact of lockdown in 11 European countries, including the UK. It suggests that between as many as 43 million people may have been infected with the virus by March 28. This means the highest estimate for the “attack rate” - the proportion of a population infected in these countries - is 11.4 per cent. “Our estimates imply that the populations in Europe are not close to herd immunity,” the authors said. They added that because the interventions will continue to trigger a drop in transmission rates, “the rate of acquisition of herd immunity will slow down rapidly”. “This implies that the virus will be able to spread rapidly should interventions be lifted,” the researchers warned.

In the UK, the study estimates that just 2.7 per cent of the population (1.6 million people) have been infected, which contrasts to epidemiological modelling from Oxford University that suggests as much as half the UK population may have already been infected. In the Imperial study, Norway and Germany have the lowest infection rates at 0.41 at 0.7 per cent respectively, while Spain has the highest “attack rate” in Europe, at 15 per cent. While Italy has the largest outbreak in Europe - second only to the United States worldwide - the country also has a bigger population than Spain, putting the attack rate at 9.8 per cent. The modelling was published by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial. The team also produced the report that suggested 260,000 people would die if the UK produced a “mitigation” strategy alone, triggering the Government's decision to impose a nationwide “suppression” or lockdown seven days ago. “This analysis shows that the interventions European countries have put in place have significantly slowed the spread of Covid-19,” said Professor Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre. “However, it is not yet clear whether or how quickly these measures will cause the numbers of new cases to decline. Data collected in the next two weeks will be crucial to refining our assessment of this key point,” he added. The report analysed real-time data from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, and determines that the interventions imposed have reduced the reproductive rate of the coronavirus by 64 per cent on average.