Links to Covid19 Actuaries' Response Group Bulletins 4 to 6

by Patrick Lee on 02 Apr 2020 in categories actuarial with tags COVID19

(The screenshot above is from Bulletin 5 from the Group).

For those unable or unwilling to log in to Linked In, here are recent bulletins published by the group in our (the whole world's) collective battle to make sense of and overcome the Covid-19 pandemic:

Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group Bulletin 4: UK is not like China! (30 Mar 2020).

This paper casts doubt on the conclusions of a paper from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College suggesting that the total number of deaths from COVID-19 in the UK could be as low as 7100.


Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group Bulletin 5: Suppression v Mitigation (31 Mar 2020)
The summary from this paper is: 

Suppression strategies seek to reduce the spread of this epidemic by aggressive identification of infected individuals, with strict isolation of them. Innovative contact tracing and testing, has shown success in slowing the epidemic in countries like Singapore, China, Taiwan and South Korea. However, this leaves the population without immunity and susceptible to recurring outbreaks.
Mitigation strategies seek to manage spread of infection through a population by significantly reducing social interaction between and among population subgroups. Specific isolation measures are implemented for vulnerable subgroups expected to be most adversely affected by infection. Success depends on:
- getting timing + level of reduced social interaction right so health services are not overwhelmed,
- high levels of compliance with social distancing,
- successful identification and isolation of vulnerable subgroups, and
- acquisition of long term immunity by those who have been infected

Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group Bulletin 6: Modelling and the Covid-19 Pandemic (1 Apr 2020)
This paper gives further background to that from Bulletin number 5 on the choice between mitigation and suppression strategies, and discusses some aspects of some models produced so far.

My comments:

  1. The numbers of deaths quoted in the Bulletin are the ones from the Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team's 16 March 2020 paper. As I have pointed out (see https://pjlee.net/blog/covid-19-some-observations-following-the-publication-of-the-imperial-college-response-teams-paper-of) the number at the top end of the range (510,00 deaths in the UK) understates, perhaps to avoid alarming the population, the true likely number of deaths, because (as the 16 March 2020 paper states, but doesn't change the numbers to allow for) that is on the unrealistic assumption that everyone who needs hospitalisation can get treated.  In reality the likely number of deaths could be up to 5 times as many (2.5 million), since the Imperial College paper assumes a death rate of 0.9% even if 4.4% of cases are able to receive hospital treatment.
  2. It would have been useful if the paper had included a reference to David Wilkie's model, which meets the final exhortation in the paper ("encourages members to engage with international modelling community by sharing models, expertise and experience"). David's model is available for anyone to use.