1/7 Prof Heneghan to Govt Science & Technology Committee, 17/9: 'For acute respiratory pathogens there are more people with other infections on board than Covid. One of the key things about detection is that when you see rising cases you are picking up what is in the background.'

2/7 'That is what the ONS survey data tells us. It has told us all along that in the background it is three or four times higher than we thought we were picking up in August, and it was circulating weakly among the population.'

3/7 'Wherever you go in and test more, you will start to pick up what is there. That is what we have seen with the strategy. When you focus on certain areas there has been a strategy that says, “Oh, my gosh, it’s going up,” but actually you are picking up what is there.'

4/7 'There has been over-interpretation, with language like “exponential rises”...an incorrect way of looking at the disease. Most of the increase is in line with a seasonal pathogen that has a linear increase at this time of year consistent with the other pathogens out there.'

5/7 'When we talk about infections and epidemics in terms of general practice, about 400 per 100k consultations constitutes an epidemic, and those are symptomatic people. That is a long-established number.'

6/7 'When you talk about 200 or 250 [consultations per 100k], you are still in the same ballpark as a seasonal pathogen. The question is how many of those 200 to 250 are symptomatic versus asymptomatic.'

7/7 'There is a fundamental shift in the debate away from protecting the NHS from the impact of the disease to cases...If we are going to react and have restrictive measures, we should expect to do them in terms of the impact of the disease.'
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/885/pdf/