Written Evidence Submitted by Professor John Edmunds, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, follow up

(CLL0010)

Dear Chair,

Mr Hunt asked me to send through details of the work that we had done early in the epidemic on test and trace. Please find enclosed a link to this paper.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30074-7/fulltext

It was published in February (that is, by this time it had gone through submission to a journal, formal peer review, revision etc) and had been discussed at SPI-M earlier than this. I don’t remember the exact date when this work was discussed at SPI-M, but I am sure that the secretariat would be able to provide you with this, if necessary. The committee might also be interested to know that this is an extremely highly cited paper – it has been cited 909 times already according to Google Scholar and so we can conclude that it has been very influential both in the UK and across the world. Indeed, Ms Monaghan was clearly aware of the work, as the last time I appeared before the committee she asked me about it.

Best wishes,

John Edmunds

(October 2020)