1/ One of the things the govt seems to have absolutely no handle on at all is that the cases in universities are likely to be much, much higher than reported because of the roll-on nature of lockdowns in halls of residence and HMOs.

2/ If, for example, there are 8 people in a self-contained student hall, and one student tests +ve on day 1, the nature of consequential symptom development, and the staggering of the need to get tested, means that 14 lockdown can be extended again and again, so peer pressure....

3/...comes into play, whereby symptomatic student no.2 may get a test on day 3 of what is now a 16 day lockdown, but student no. 3 losing taste on day 5 is disinclined to report as they know that takes lockdown to 18 days.

4/ Some students will of course do the right thing clinically, but many will surely and understandably prefer not to impose a further burden on their flatmates, and perhaps even convince themselves they are not symptomatic when they are.

5/ The consequences are twofold: 1) people coming out of isolation while still infectious and passing into the wider community 2) cases recorded being many times lower than real incidence.

6/ But, as I say the govt does not even seem to have recognized this as a possible issue in the absence of widespread testing in universities, and even if it did the growing shortage with the Roche debacle means it probably can't be fixed by wider testing now anyway. So Tory

7/ Maybe they can pay Boston Consulting Group a few million to come up with a solution.