Elisabeth Mahase
BMJ, 2020
A two week lockdown in the UK could “put the epidemic back by around 28 days or more,” the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has said. Documents published this week1 show that, on 21 September, SAGE recommended a two to three week “circuit breaker” to reduce the reproduction number to under one. But the UK government has not, so far, announced such a measure. This is despite researchers estimating that such a break could reduce deaths by around 29% to 49%. In a preprint, a team from UK universities used simple analysis and age structured models matched to the unfolding UK epidemic to investigate the action of precautionary breaks.2 The researchers suggested that the break could be combined with the school half term holiday in October but said this same logic could …
Cited by 4 publications.
Field of study: Medicine