Vallance said the government’s approach was aimed at broadening the peak of the epidemic, and allowing immunity to build up among the population.
“What we don’t want is everybody to end up getting it in a short period of time so we swamp and overwhelm NHS services – that’s the flattening of the peak,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it. Those are the key things we need to do.”
“If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time,” he said. The government is concerned that if not enough people catch the virus now, it will re-emerge in the winter, when the NHS is already overstretched.