The effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 cases, deaths and demand for hospital services in the UK: a modelling study

Nicholas G Davies; Adam J Kucharski; Rosalind M Eggo; Amy Gimma; W. John Edmunds

As other countries in Europe began restricting mass gatherings, there was a question about the impact such measures might have in the UK, with a particular focus on stopping spectator sports [20] . By analysing the total attendance at spectator sports in the UK, we performed additional simulations to evaluate the potential impact of such restrictions ( Fig. 4a, Table S2 ). Although yearly attendance at sporting events is high (75.1 million spectators per year [21] ), even if we assume that people make the equivalent of their mean daily physical contacts at such events (i.e. 5 contacts per person, to make a total of 375 million), this number is very low relative to the number of yearly contacts which occur outside the context of sporting events (269 billion [12] ). We estimated that stopping spectator sports would have little direct effect on the number of cases ( Fig. 4a, Table S4 ). We simulated a more general reduction in leisure contacts-which mainly occur in pubs, bars, restaurants and cinemas-by reducing leisure contacts by 75%, and found a larger (though still modest) impact on the epidemic. Previous work on pandemic influenza has estimated that many individuals are likely to choose to avoid such settings, as they perceive them to be risky [22] .