Health officials want to avoid large numbers of people in hospital at the same time - as the UK moves into a 'delay' phase.
The first scenario - a moderate approach which aimed to reduce the spread by 30% over a four-week period - suggested the peak could be cut by 25% and delayed to the summer.
A second scenario took a similar approach but this time over a longer, eight-week period. It could reduce the peak by 50% - avoiding an acute pressure on the NHS and tailing off before autumn.Finally academics looked at a more extreme approach like China's quarantining of Hubei province. This aimed to reduce the spread by 60% over eight weeks.
While initially effective, once the measures were lifted, the model suggested a second wave of cases and a higher peak to coincide with the start of the winter flu season, when traditionally the NHS is under more pressure.This research explains why some experts worry that cases will rise in China when restrictions on Hubei are lifted.
For Public Health England, moderate measures are probably better and they need optimal time to have an impact.This is an SEIR model developed by Jessica Bridgen, PhD student at Lancaster University. The model shows an epidemic of an infectious disease with the current best estimated characteristics of Covid-19 in a single county of the UK, with a population size of approximately 1.1 million, and starting with 100 people infected. The model assumes a R0 of 2.
Why not plot the y-axis? The model illustrates how social distancing as an intervention could affect the number of cases during an epidemic, but it is not a predictive tool. To avoid misunderstanding, we have decided not to show the total number of cases predicted by the model, but instead how social distancing can shift the dynamics of an epidemic.
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