England's new measures aren't enough to prevent soaring Covid-19 infections | Jennifer Dowd

The path out of the pandemic relies on a full toolkit of strategies to buy time - including restricting home visits

The new restrictions announced by Boris Johnson yesterday, including the closing of restaurants and pubs at 10pm and increased use of face coverings, fall short of a second lockdown" but signal that life is still far from returning to normal.

While England's true number of cases is likely much lower than in the spring due to increased testing, it is the ski-jump trajectory of recent case growth that gives epidemiologists palpitations. The cruelty of exponential growth, with cases doubling at regular intervals, is real. The flipside is that reducing transmission, even a little, can have a huge payoff in reducing the total number of infections.