Chris Witty and Patrick Valence doing a science q&a now
Witty: We are dealing with uncertainty - have accelerated knowledge from virtually nothing in January to what we have now. But there are critical questions we don't know the answer to now - but we will know in 6/12 months. At this juncture we are using the best science we have.
Witty: Responding to criticism of policy - says different opinions are a good thing in science.
Witty: Modelling is not an absolute science. We are confident about some things - mortality rates for example. Other areas still have unknowns such as what proportion of people catch this without any symptoms? Knowing this would be transformation for models.
Valence: We need to get this contained as much as we can to reduce the peak - then we can think about relaxing measures and that's where testing becomes incredibly important. So testing for active virus infection - and also for antibodies.
Witty: On mortality - because we are testing in hospitals (so people w/ severe symptoms) there will be a period when you divide the no of cases by the no of people who die - and our death rate will look high. But as we test more widely in the population it should come down
Valence: Everyone is looking for a serological test (to check for antibodies) - including PHE. There are two types of tests - more intensive lab tests and a second easy-to-use test. PHE looking at both.
Valence: Once you can find antibodies you can find - 1 - the proportions of people who are asymptomatic and - 2- who has had the virus and has an antibody against it. So we could potentially see who is safe to go back into society and work in certain settings
Witty: All viruses mutate but the question is 'are those mutations relevant?'. There is a lot of chatter about whether it could become more dangerous as it mutates - it’s theoretically possible but if there is a direction of travel viruses tend to become less virulent over time.
Witty: We want to extend tests to NHS workers - then the wider public (on testing capacity going up)
Witty: Children get this disease much less strongly than adults - all the data shows that. But there will be some young people - a much much smaller proportion - who will get a more severe disease. It's important to say that.
Valence: It's not the case that young people can just ignore the disease - they need to start social distancing they can't just ignore it.
