ARCHIVE 16th June 2020: shops reopening, FTTIS

SHORT THREAD: As shops are reopening across England with big queues of people waiting to get in (and presumably using public transport to get there in city centres), I was briefly on @BBCNewsnight as part of @IndependentSage last night making the case it was too early...

We know that transmission indoors is much higher than outdoors. We know people are less cautious about social distancing now than in April. We know we need a strong Find, Test, Trace, Isolate & Support system to support reopening. We know it's not there.

We also know that new confirmed COVID cases are still much higher in UK than in other European countries coming out of lockdown - about twice as high (and UK is *not* nearly testing everyone with symptoms yet, so the F for Find in FTTIS is missing).

Opening up is important for people's livelihood & wellbeing, but we need to do it safely and that means with strong FTTIS (Find, Test, Trace, Isolate, Support). Other European countries have it in place and it is (so far) working. In the US it is haphazard.

And indeed many of the US states that opened up early are seeing worrying surges in cases - e.g. see below from @COVID19Tracking . I do not want to see that here in a few weeks - and I really really hope that the govt is stepping up to improve our FTTIS system. We need it. Now.