Data presented by the UK government as lockdown was eased shows the transmission of COVID-19 had already increased
Abstract
Background
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an international emergency that has been addressed in many countries by changes in and restrictions on behaviour. These are often collectively labelled social distancing and lockdown. On the 23rd June 2020, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced substantial easings of restrictions. This paper examines some of the data he presented.
Methods
Generalised additive models, with negative binomial errors and cyclic term representing day-of-week effects, were fitted to data on the daily numbers of new confirmed cases of COVID-19. Exponential rates for the epidemic were estimated for different periods, and then used to calculate R, the reproduction number, for the disease in different periods.
Results
After an initial stabilisation, the lockdown reduced R to around 0.81 (95% CI: 0.79, 0.82). This value increased to around 0.94 (95% CI 0.89, 0.996) for the fortnight from the 9th June 2020.
Conclusions
Official UK data, presented as the easing of the lockdown was announced, shows that R was already more than half way back to 1 at that point. That suggests there was little scope for the announced changes to be implemented without restarting the spread of the disease.
Related articles
Related articles are currently not available for this article.