Unscrutinised data is being used to justify draconian measures

The decision to close pubs and restaurants in the North now looks inevitable. Yesterday, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, warned 149 MPS that the hospitality sector was driving soaring case rates. The problem is, no published figures show that to be the case.

NHS Test and Trace has been recording where infected people met close contacts who were later found to have the virus. Overwhelmingly it was in a home. Figures released last Friday by Public Health England showed 75.3 per cent of people reached by tracers had come into contact with an infected person either in their own home or in someone else’s.

Only five per cent reported close contact in a “leisure or community” setting, and that category included pubs, restaurants, places of worship, celebrations, entertainment, organised trips and community activities.

Anywhere large crowds meet is bound to carry risk and some experts have argued that closing pubs and restaurants will “break the chain” that allows the disease to get into homes in the first place. In Hong Kong, Iceland and Japan, large clusters were traced back to pubs and restaurants. Yet while there are notable exceptions, such as the Hawthorn Bar in Aberdeen, where 32 people were infected, few of the UK’S 47,000 pubs suffered outbreaks.

The PHE surveillance report, which also investigates where clusters occur, found few in the hospitality industry. The vast majority – in which more than one person is infected – happened in schools, workplaces and care homes.

The report does suggest that eating out was the most commonly reported activity for those testing positive, in the 2-7 days prior to symptom onset.

The authors state: “Although this does not describe confirmed sources of infection, the information may be helpful to indicate possible places where transmission is happening.” Yet there is a fatal flaw with this assertion because there is no control group. Who is to say eating out would not be the most commonly reported activity for uninfected people as well?

Without a control group to compare, the figures are meaningless.

In a webinar yesterday, Prof Whitty briefed 149 MPS and showed a chart of unpublished results suggesting the hospitality sector was responsible for 30 per cent of “common exposures” to coronavirus. It was unclear exactly what “common exposures” meant, but what was striking was how low down on the list household contact was – less than five per cent – staggeringly out of line with the NHS Test and Trace data.

It is troubling that unscrutinised data are being used to justify draconian policies that will take away yet more freedoms from millions already forced to live apart from family and friends.

When we asked the Department of Health to see the figures and questioned what the chart actually showed, we were given no more information and told they would be “published soon”.

MPS were also steered towards a study from a US Centres for Disease Control investigation that found people testing positive were twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than those with negative results.

But it would be unwise to base policy decisions on epidemiological data from another country without factoring in differing demographics and population movement. The data are also from July, when the virus was at a different stage in the US.

What seems to be happening is that the Government does not want to shut schools, universities and workplaces, and can do nothing about household transmission, even though these are by far the biggest drivers of disease.

Instead it clings to the things it can control – pubs and restaurants. It is unlikely to do much good, and probably paves the way for complete lockdown in the next few weeks.

Yesterday Prof John Edmunds, a member of Sage, warned full lockdown at Christmas may be necessary if stricter measures are not brought in soon. If the Chief Medical Officer gets his way, the next few months will also be lacking in good cheer.