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Oxford Study: Coronavirus May Have Already Infected Half of U.K. Population
By Matt Stieb
nymag.com
Because testing regimens across the world have varied tremendously, the actual mortality and hospitalization rates of COVID-19 have been hard to pin down. But modeling by researchers at the University of Oxford could provide some welcome good news, even if the initial takeaway doesn’t seem so promising. According to a team from Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease lab, half of the population of the United Kingdom may have already been infected with the coronavirus. If this modeling is confirmed in follow-up studies, that would mean that fewer than .01 percent of those infected require hospital treatment, with a majority showing very minor symptoms, or none at all.
According to the modeling, the coronavirus arrived in mid-January at the latest, and spread undetected for over a month before the first cases were confirmed. Based on a susceptibility-infected-recovery model — a commonly used estimate in epidemiology — with data from case and death reports in the U.K. and Italy, the researchers determined that the initial “herd immunity” strategy of the U.K. government could have been sound. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said lead researcher Sunetra Gupta, referring to an academic report predicting that up to 250,000 could be killed if the government maintained its plan to suppress the virus “but not get rid of it completely,” as the country’s chief scientific adviser put it. As of Monday, 87 people in the United Kingdom had died from the coronavirus; out of a total of 90,436 tests, 8,077 were positive.
To see if their math checks out, the Oxford team is now working with researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent to begin antibody testing as soon as this week. “We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” Gupta told the Financial Times.
In an interview with New York’s James Walsh, Pulitzer-winning infectious disease reporter Laurie Garrett explained the public-health necessity of antibody tests:
Though the Oxford modeling seems promising, like all academic studies reckoning with the coronavirus, it should be read by the public with caution. If antibody tests did not prove the epidemiologists’ findings, the modeling could undercut the success of social distancing measures that public-health experts consider vital to stopping the spread of the virus. It does, in all likelihood, reveal the Trump administration’s errors in making trillion-dollar stimulus decisions without having the epidemiological understanding that proper rates of testing would provide.
By Matt Stieb
Oxford Model: Coronavirus May Have Already Infected Half of U.K. Population
If the hypothetical model is proven by antibody testing, it would mean minuscule hospitalization rates for coronavirus cases in the country.
nymag.com
Because testing regimens across the world have varied tremendously, the actual mortality and hospitalization rates of COVID-19 have been hard to pin down. But modeling by researchers at the University of Oxford could provide some welcome good news, even if the initial takeaway doesn’t seem so promising. According to a team from Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease lab, half of the population of the United Kingdom may have already been infected with the coronavirus. If this modeling is confirmed in follow-up studies, that would mean that fewer than .01 percent of those infected require hospital treatment, with a majority showing very minor symptoms, or none at all.
According to the modeling, the coronavirus arrived in mid-January at the latest, and spread undetected for over a month before the first cases were confirmed. Based on a susceptibility-infected-recovery model — a commonly used estimate in epidemiology — with data from case and death reports in the U.K. and Italy, the researchers determined that the initial “herd immunity” strategy of the U.K. government could have been sound. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said lead researcher Sunetra Gupta, referring to an academic report predicting that up to 250,000 could be killed if the government maintained its plan to suppress the virus “but not get rid of it completely,” as the country’s chief scientific adviser put it. As of Monday, 87 people in the United Kingdom had died from the coronavirus; out of a total of 90,436 tests, 8,077 were positive.
To see if their math checks out, the Oxford team is now working with researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent to begin antibody testing as soon as this week. “We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” Gupta told the Financial Times.
In an interview with New York’s James Walsh, Pulitzer-winning infectious disease reporter Laurie Garrett explained the public-health necessity of antibody tests:
Though the Oxford modeling seems promising, like all academic studies reckoning with the coronavirus, it should be read by the public with caution. If antibody tests did not prove the epidemiologists’ findings, the modeling could undercut the success of social distancing measures that public-health experts consider vital to stopping the spread of the virus. It does, in all likelihood, reveal the Trump administration’s errors in making trillion-dollar stimulus decisions without having the epidemiological understanding that proper rates of testing would provide.
