ON THE PLUS SIDE: WHEN MODELLING ENABLED FREEDOMS TO BE RESTORED

Throughout the pandemic, modellers have borne the brunt of anger from members of the public who believed that their estimates of how Covid might pan out prompted the country to go into lockdown, or kept restrictions in place.

But, in some instances, the modelling was used to give freedoms back.

Work by Bristol University in the spring of 2020 allowed single people to form a “bubble” with another family, and also gave the green light for the reopening of primary schools.

Dr Ellen Brooks-pollock, senior lecturer in Veterinary Public Health and Infectious Disease Modelling at Bristol, says: “Early on, we found that if a single-person household joined together with another household, it had almost no effect on transmission levels.

“So that is one example of where the modelling actually meant lockdown was easier for people. We also did a lot of work on schools reopening and found that whatever you did with primary schools, it had a relatively small impact on transmission.

“So modelling gave us that insight that really the transmission in schools was relatively less important than what was happening outside.”

The Scientific Pandemic Advisory Group on Modelling (SPI-M) first met on January 27 2020, and then weekly throughout the crisis, with around 50 modellers from multiple universities feeding into the group.

The researchers also resisted pleas from the Government to model scenarios when it was unclear how the public would respond.

Prof Graham Medley, chair of SPI-M, and Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says: “In the past, we have often been asked questions by the Government that are un-modellable and we can’t answer them. Right back in May 2020, we were asked whether garden centres could open safely. Well, we can’t model that, because it all depends on what people do. If it’s the only place that people go, then everyone might go there; we just couldn’t know.”