With the political arguments taking place I thought I would go look at the SAGE documents to see what they actually said. They reviewed over 25 different options for responding to the increased infection rate – one of them was a circuit break (or actually a series of circuit breaks).
One of the key lines in the report is that it says it is one half of the information that needed to be considered, the other part is the economic and harm study.
There are a wide range of options considered, several of which are not thought to be effective. An interesting one is large outdoor events do not seem to have much impact on the virus rates. Likewise closing shops has a minimal effect.
It is interesting to note that one of the restrictions considered and not put forward is closing borders between parts of the UK.
So what does the report say a circuit breaker is:
- It would be a stay at home order – just like the first lockdown. Schools and universities might need to close.
- It might be timed around school holidays to reduce the effect on education
- A two week circuit breaker would give a four week delay (that suggests 2 week circuit breaker followed by a six week work period)
- The death rate would not be reduced – it would just flatten
- It would have negative effects on people (particularly poor and BAME)
It is worth remembering this report was written back in September, and the world has changed since then – for example the R value appears to have been about 0.1 lower than the assumption in September.
If you do the maths then the actual hospitalisation rate increase is just slightly higher than the rate that was predicted had a circuit breaker taken place.
So should we have gone for a circuit breaker. Really tough question – would you be willing to stay in your house for 2 weeks at a time every 2 months? Would we send university students home? Would we cancel all non-urgent hospital visits?
More on the report tomorrow…