This week began with more frightening graphs from SPI-M, the government’s scientific modelling committee. A team at Warwick University calculated that, had the 21 June reopening gone ahead, hospitalisations could have peaked at over 3,000 a day in August.
By contrast, the first peak in April 2020 saw 3,149 admissions in one day and the second peak in January reached 4,160 on a single day. Yet, like the infamous ‘4,000 deaths a day’ graph presented at the Downing Street press conference last October to justify a second lockdown, it took only a couple of days for questions to be asked about the assumptions behind the scenario.
Pessimistic assumptions about the efficacy of vaccines have been a regular feature of SPI-M modelling this year
It transpired that the team had assumed that two doses of the AstraZeneca were 90 per cent effective at preventing serious illness and the Pfizer vaccine 91 per cent.
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