“The government says we have to learn to live with Covid, but to learn to do that we need data which is agile enough and trustworthy enough. The ONS survey and React have been very good examples of agile and trustworthy programmes.
“We know immunity is going to wane and health authorities have to decide how to deal with that, with recommendations for boosters, for example. So they need reliable information about what is going on to target their strategy.
“React has given very good information about the effectiveness of vaccines and can monitor the waning of immunity. The pandemic is not yet in a stable equilibrium. Many factors are still changing and we need to keep monitoring basic epidemiological quantities such as prevalence in a reliable way.
“I would like to see a strategic plan for preparedness in terms of what type of studies and resources they are going to keep. So far, myself and other experts at the Royal Statistical Society haven’t been consulted, and there seems to be a lack of strategy – we don’t know how they are going to monitor new variants, for example.”
Source: Dismay as funding for UK’s ‘world-beating’ Covid trackers is axed | Coronavirus | The Guardian
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