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SUMMARY:Critical weaknesses in shielding strategies for COVID-19 - Cameron
  Smith & Kit Yates\, University of Bath
DTSTART:20220629T150000Z
DTEND:20220629T160000Z
UID:TALK176213@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Ciara Dangerfield
DESCRIPTION:The COVID-19 pandemic\, caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2\,
  has led to a wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions being impleme
 nted around the world to curb transmission. However\, the economic and soc
 ial costs of some of these measures\, especially lockdowns\, has been high
 . An alternative and widely discussed public health strategy for the COVID
 -19 pandemic would have been to `shield' those most vulnerable to COVID-19
  (minimising their contacts with others)\, while allowing infection to spr
 ead among lower risk individuals with the aim of reaching herd immunity. I
 n this talk we will retrospectively explore the effectiveness of such a st
 rategy using a stochastic SEIR framework\, showing that even under the unr
 ealistic assumption of perfect shielding\, hospitals would have been rapid
 ly overwhelmed with many deaths among lower risk individuals. Crucially\, 
 even a small (20%) reduction in the effectiveness of shielding would have 
 likely led to a large increase (>150%) in the number of deaths compared to
  perfect shielding. Our findings demonstrate that shielding the vulnerable
  while allowing infections to spread among the wider population would not 
 have been a viable public health strategy for COVID-19 and is unlikely to 
 be effective for future pandemics.
LOCATION:Zoom
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