Research indicating “50,000” would die if universities re-opened is unrealistic and based on many assumptions

The University and College Union, a trade union for academic staff, shared a Twitter post that said “Without strong controls, the return to universities would cause a minimum of 50,000 deaths.”

This is based on an unreviewed research paper that makes a number of assumptions and does not consider measures already in place, like the Test and Trace programme or local lockdowns.

The most bold assumption is that there would be conditions in universities which would mean that every single student in the UK caught coronavirus in the autumn term.

It then calculates that this would lead to 5-6% of the general population contracting the virus as a result of universities reopening.

But will this actually happen?

When questioned, the article’s author told us the predicted death toll “will not actually happen in its entirety” because it would trigger a local or national lockdown once it became clear what was happening.

Another expert agreed that reopening universities would increase the spread, but that the scale would not be as devastating.

The problems with the prediction

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FACT CHECK

Matt Hancock gets test and trace figures wrong (again)

In parliament the Health Secretary and the Shadow Health Secretary clashed over the performance of NHS Test and Trace in England.

Jonathan Ashworth claimed that only 69.4% of identified contacts are now reached and asked to self-isolate, which Matt Hancock disagreed with, saying “this is simply untrue.” But Mr Ashworth was correct.

It’s worth putting that 69.4% figure in context. It refers only to close contacts identified by the tracing system, not all the actual close contacts that people with positive tests may have had.

In the latest data at the time of the exchange, 81.4% of people identified as Covid positive in the contact tracing system were reached. Close contacts were identified for 80.2% of those cases - and of those close contacts, 69.4% were reached. That’s down from 77.1% in the previous week.

If you read last week's newsletter, you'll know that this isn’t the first time Mr Hancock has mis-stated the test and trace statistics in parliament.

False negatives

FACT CHECK

It’s not true that countries were ordering “Covid-19 tests” years before the pandemic began

A number of social media users have spotted data on The World Integrated Trade Solutions website that they believed showed countries ordering coronavirus tests in 2018.

The World Integrated Trade Solutions website is a collaborative project, between a number of different bodies like the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. But the data doesn’t show what people on social media are claiming it shows.

The testing devices bought in 2018 were previously existing medical devices that have since been reclassified as critical to tackling Covid-19.

Some of the products identified by social media users are instruments used for in-vitro diagnosis, and a kit used to test for an immune response. So you can see how these products would be used both before the pandemic for normal medical practices, as well as being useful in fighting coronavirus.

World Integrated Trade Solutions appear to have amended their website to omit ‘Covid-19’ from the description of such products.

What countries *are* trading

FACT CHECK

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