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Nobody wanted to see a repeat of the spring, with hospitalisations rising and stringent measures coming back in. But UK isn't in quite the same position as March, so here are some sources for medium-term optimism as we come into a difficult winter... 1/
First, UK now has far more testing capacity, with more becoming available ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/28/10-of-englands-population-could-be-tested-for-covid-19-every-week). Everything needs to fit together much better to reduce transmission, but infrastructure should help create more control options than earlier in 2020: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tfms-consensus-statement-on-mass-testing-27-august-2020 2/
Regardless of your views on best way forward, I hope we can agree that working to keep virus out of risk groups (& hence their contacts) is crucial. And to do this successfully, we need to know where infection is - and that means effective testing and tracing. 3/
Thanks to data like ONS, REACT, Zoe, we also have much better real-time situational awareness, which gave early signals about current problems back in September. Choices about what to do still difficult, but data created plenty of warning about rising hospitalisations. 4/
More broadly, we have evidence people can mount immune response after infection and this response can provide some protection from infection (e.g. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.13.20173161v1) and disease ( https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31008-4). 5/
Seasonal coronaviruses typically lead to temporary protection to infection & longer protection to severe disease, and SARS-CoV-2 looking similar. This isn’t totally new type of virus & above evidence means should be reasonably optimistic about vaccine prospects (it's not HIV). 6/
There are over 200 vaccines in development ( https://vac-lshtm.shinyapps.io/ncov_vaccine_landscape/), several of which have promising immunogenicity data. Likely earliest ones will have interim efficacy results by end 2020 or early 2021. They won’t solve everything, but could be very useful additional tool. 7/
We have evidence on what treatments do (and don't) work effectively at reducing duration and impact of disease, thanks to trials like RECOVERY ( https://www.recoverytrial.net/results ) and Solidarity ( https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/solidarity-clinical-trial-for-covid-19-treatments). As epidemic continues, such trials will generate more insights. 8/
We also have many international case studies to learn from, providing data on a range of control measures, and what the epidemiological, social and economic impacts of COVID and accompanying policies have been: https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1313760850457620483?s=20 9/
The above doesn’t make the current epidemic - or decisions around it - any easier in Europe, but it does point to more effective & less disruptive options for control in 2021. 10/10
