Evidence informing the UK's COVID-19 public health response must be transparent

Alwan, Nisreen A, Bhopal, Raj, Burgess, Rochelle A, Colbourn, Tim, Cuevas, Luis E, Smith, George Davey, Egger, Matthias, Eldridge, Sandra, Gallo, Valentina, Gilthorpe, Mark S, Greenhalgh, Trish, Griffiths, Christopher, Hunter, Paul R, Jaffar, Shabbar, Jepson, Ruth, Low, Nicola, Martineau, Adrian, Mccoy, David, Orcutt, Miriam, Pankhania, Bharat, Pikhart, Hynek, Pollock, Allyson, Scally, Gabriel, Smith, James, Sridhar, Devi, Taylor, Stephanie, Tennant, Peter W G, Themistocleous, Yrene and Wilson, Anne (2020) Evidence informing the UK's COVID-19 public health response must be transparent. The Lancet, 395 (10229), 1036-1037. (doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30667-X).

Abstract

The UK Government asserts that its response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is based on evidence and expert modelling. However, different scientists can reach different conclusions based on the same evidence, and small differences in assumptions can lead to large differences in model predictions.
Our country's response to COVID-19 is demonstrably different from how most other countries are responding globally, including elsewhere in Europe. As the government has stressed, it is imperative to delay and flatten the epidemic curve to ensure the National Health Service can cope.1 This is particularly essential for the UK, which only has 2·5 hospital beds per 1000 population, fewer than in Italy (3·2 per 1000), France (6·0), and Germany (8·0). Initial data from Italy have shown that 9–11% of actively infected patients with COVID-19 required intensive care during the first 10 days of March, 2020.2

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Contributors

Author: Nisreen A Alwan

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