Two days ago, the Prime Minister told us we are at a critical point in the Covid-19 crisis as a second wave threatened to engulf us. He warned of a second national lockdown. Yesterday, in spite of evidence from Imperial College of a declining R number, Matt Hancock introduced new restrictions in Liverpool and Teeside. But is the government behind the curve, failing to notice that the second wave is already fizzling out?
As I have argued here before, the daily numbers of confirmed cases are not a reliable indicator of the path of the epidemic. They are highly dependent on how many tests are being conducted and where they are being conducted — send a mobile testing unit to a known hotspot like Glasgow University, for example, and you will inevitably pick up a ‘surge’ in cases, regardless of what is actually happening. What really matters are the surveys on a randomised sample of the population — the React study, which I reported on here yesterday, and the ONS infection survey.
The government must now decide how to respond to the new figures
This week’s instalment of the latter has just been published this morning — and, like the React survey, suggests that the epidemic is slowing.
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