March 1, 2021

preprint on COVID-19 and universities

Scientists carried out a piece of work to analyse the spread of COVID-19 on university campuses during the autumn term 2020, to determine whether there was evidence that outbreaks in university settings led to outbreaks in the community.  They also carried out prospective modelling on the effect of staggered returns of students to universities and the impact of asymptomatic testing both on return and during term time.

This preprint was posted online last Monday as part of the SAGE document publication, and is also available as a preprint here: https://www.newton.ac.uk/files/preprints/ni20004.pdf

Please note this data is a preprint, so it is early work that has not yet been through peer-review and is not published in a journal.

Journalists dialled in to this press briefing to hear the scientists who carried out the work talk about their data.

Speakers included:

Dr Mike Tildesley, Associate Professor, University of Warwick

Prof Julia Gog, Professor of Mathematical Biology, University of Cambridge

Dr Edward Hill, Research Fellow in Mathematical Epidemiology, University of Warwick

Dr Jessica Enright, Lecturer in Computing Science, University of Glasgow