Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken to validate against observed data modelled effects of (a) lockdown on reducing covid-19 virus transmission and (b) lifting lockdown on subsequent covid-19 virus transmission; and if he will make a statement.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and its subgroup SPI-M-O regularly review modelling investigating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions. For example, after the current national restrictions were introduced on 5 January 2021, SAGE considered several different modelling scenarios to explore the potential impact of the new measures.

These scenarios investigated the number of hospital admissions, deaths and hospital bed occupancy under a range of different ‘R’ values. An overview of these scenarios and a comparison to the outturn data can found in SPI-M-O’s consensus statements from 13 January and 3 February 2021 which are available at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spi-m-o-consensus-statement-on-covid-19-13-january-2021

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spi-m-o-consensus-statement-on-covid-19-3-february-2021