School pupils have had a tough year. For those with examinations, such as A-levels, it has been even tougher. The Department for Education decreed that A-levels and GCSEs should not take place due to the COVID crisis. This meant that an alternative way of allocating grades to students needed to be found. To set the …
Category archives: Operational Research
Commentary on COVID-19 cases in Leicester
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5MLUw1CMsw Leicester went into lockdown in early July, with the Statutory Instrument setting out these restrictions published on 3 July (The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Leicester) Regulations 2020) just before the loosening of restrictions elsewhere in the country. Public Health England has published an analysis of what is known about the Leiecester outbreak. Diagrams are …
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Thinking of Drinking?
The pubs open on Saturday in England, allowing people to mix in confined spaces and potentially transmit COVID-19. In Friday’s Number 10 briefing, the Chief Medical Officer said”The biggest risks are when lots of people from completely different households are brought together in close proximity indoors. And whether that’s in a pub or a cricket …
Which English city could be next for a Leicester-like lockdown? 2 July New Analysis
Public Health England has today released the second tranche of data for COVID tests. This is the most comprehensive data we have for tests as it includes Pillar 1 tests (those conducted by PHE and NHS hospitals) and Pillar 2 tests (those conducted by private companies under NHS Test and Trace). Some journalists had been …
Simulation Modelling Community Response to COVID-19
Our paper in Journal of Simulation ‘How simulation modelling can help reduce the impact of COVID-19’ setting out how simulation modelling can help in the fight against COVID-19 and subsequent epidemics and pandemics. Click here to access the paper. ABSTRACT Modelling has been used extensively by all national governments and the World Health Organisation in …
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Operational Research Response to COVID-19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zZVRx2RRU
BBC Interview: Exponential Growth (COVID-19 Interview)
Interview with BBC Radio Leicester on the exponential growth phase of the pandemic in the UK (note the date of the recording is 23 March 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O1SDUeEhZ8&
Social Distancing using Play-Doh and Matches
There has been much talk about using social distancing as a response to the Coronavirus outbreak. Here’s a video of how social distancing can be used: Close Contact, where the population is infected very rapidly. This is not A Good Thing – the national health service is overwhelmed, and the death rate goes up as …
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Coronavirus: The First Big Test of Behavioral Science
The United Kingdom is at a crossroads, an ideological battle between natural science and behavioral science. Let’s hope for all our sakes we get this one right. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, is facing a dilemma. When do we go from the so-called containment phase for controlling Covid-19 Coronavirus, to the delay phase. In …
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Contagion: How to Model It and What R-nought (R0) Actually Means
The 2011 film Contagion, starring the spectacularly ill-fated Gwyneth Paltrow, is a dramatization of a viral pandemic starting in pretty analagous circumstances to the current Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak. It’s a good film, and is a great introduction to the work of Centers for Disease Control (CDCs) that monitor the spread – the epidemiology – …
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