Inside the model that may be making US, UK rethink coronavirus control

Enlarge / WUHAN, Feb. 5, 2020-Patients infected with the novel coronavirus are seen at a makeshift hospital converted from an exhibition center in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. Containment methods like this can help countries get the pandemic under control. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency)

On Monday, the COVID-19 Response Team at Imperial College London released a report that describes its efforts to create a model of how various control efforts could alter the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic in the US and UK. The report is being published by a World Health Organization publication, but it had been provided to the governments of these countries, where it is reportedly influencing their responses.

The report paints a grim picture of millions of deaths in the two countries if nothing is done, as infections greatly outstrip the capacity of their hospital systems to handle patients. But it does find that aggressive steps can hold off the virus until an effective vaccine can be developed, although those will mean shutting down many aspects of society for over a year.

Before this induces panic, however, it's important to emphasize that these outcomes are based on a model that, because of the incomplete information we currently possess, is imperfect and has to rely on a number of assumptions. We'll go over all of these limitations before going into detail on the conclusions the Imperial College team derived from the model.

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