Conclusion
Unlocking current social restrictions as soon as possible is vital to minimise demand on the economy and the impact of prolonged social containment. However, this must be balanced against containing the current pandemic and minimising future infection waves.
While mindful of the limitations of trend analysis, we believe that several key principles can be derived from the analysis which may aid policy makers in a smoother transition to reducing social containment and sustainably managing the COVID-19 disease. These principles include focusing on achieving low enough R values to keep mortality comparable with influenza, tailoring social behavioural policies to the ongoing tally of latest case numbers and calculating the current R-value within each locality.
We hope this analysis will have relevance and utility for policymakers at national and regional levels in managing the population ‘Unlock’ across the UK and elsewhere.