The next big event in the saga (I choose my words carefully) of our Covid-19 lockdown is the preliminary results in early May of the Office for National Statistics (ONS)/University of Oxford survey to find out who has had the virus.
Officials and ministers hope this will help them to judge how far the current social-distancing rules have depressed the rate of viral transmission, or the notorious ‘R0’ – which is the estimated number of people infected by a person who is infected.
The point is that ministers, advised by the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser, have decided they can modify – though not end – lockdown when R0 is close to 0.5.
This would mean that it would take two infected people to pass the virus on to another person (as a statistical average, not as a pincer movement, if you see what I mean).
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