page_title: COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom
section_title: Mathematical modelling
hierarchical_section_title: COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom / Mathematical modelling
caption_attribution_description: English: Social distancing at the pharmacy Cockfosters London 23 March 2020Русский: Социальное дистанцирование в лондонской аптеке, 23 марта 2020 года.
context_page_description: The COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus reached the country in late January 2020. As of 30 August 2020 there have been 334,467 confirmed cases and 41,499 deaths of confirmed cases, the world's fourth-highest death rate per capita among major countries. There were 57,096 deaths where the death certificate mentioned COVID-19 by 14 August. More than 90% of those dying had underlying illnesses or were over 60 years old. The infection rate is higher in care homes than in the community. There is large regional variation in the outbreak's severity. In March, London had the highest number of infections while North East England has the highest infection rate. England is the country of the UK with the highest mortality rate, while Northern Ireland has the lowest. Healthcare in the UK is devolved to each country.
  The Department of Health and Social Care launched a public health information campaign to help slow the virus's spread, and began posting daily updates in early February.
context_section_description: Reports from the Medical Research Council's Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College, London have been providing mathematically calculated estimates of cases and case fatality rates. In February, the team at Imperial, led by epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, estimated about two-thirds of cases in travellers from China were not detected and that some of these may have begun "chains of transmission within the countries they entered". They forecast that the new coronavirus could infect up to 60% of the UK's population, in the worst-case scenario.
  In a paper on 16 March, the Imperial team provided detailed forecasts of the potential impacts of the epidemic in the UK and US. It detailed the potential outcomes of an array of 'non-pharmaceutical interventions'. Two potential overall strategies outlined were: mitigation, in which the aim is to reduce the health impact of the epidemic but not to stop transmission completely; and suppression, where the aim is to reduce transmission rates to a point where case numbers fall. Until this point, government actions had been based on a strategy of mitigation, but the modelling predicted that while this would reduce deaths by approximately 2/3, it would still lead to approximately 250,000 deaths from the disease and the health systems becoming overwhelmed. On 16 March, the Prime Minister announced changes to government advice, extending self-isolation to whole households, advising social distancing particularly for vulnerable groups, and indicating that further measures were likely to be required in the future. A paper on 30 March by Imperial estimated that the lockdown would reduce the number of dead from 510,000 to less than 20,000.
  In April, biostatistician Professor Sheila Bird said delay in the reporting of deaths from the virus meant there was a risk of underestimating the steepness of the rising epidemic trend.
caption: Social distancing at a London pharmacy, 23 March 2020
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