Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answers by Lord Bethell on 6 January (HL9878, HL9881, HL9883, HL9957), what reasonable worst-case planning scenario estimates were applied to the forecast modelling used to inform the decision to place England under national restrictions in (1) March 2020, (2) November 2020 and (3) January 2021; and to what extent the new COVID-19 variant has altered the assumptions underpinning the January restrictions.
Answered by Lord True - Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal
The Reasonable Worst Case Scenario is an operational contingency planning tool. The Government has used a broad range of health, social and economic evidence to inform decision making, including modelled projections. The evidence used to introduce measures on 5 January 2021 included amended assumptions based on the increased transmissibility of the B.1.1.7 variant.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the proportion of COVID-19 cases that are asymtomatic they applied to the forecasting models that were used to inform the decision to place England under national restrictions in March to address the COVID-19 pandemic; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (SAGE) is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to support decisions by the Government. The SAGE subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational use their own estimates of metrics such as asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, or infection fatality rates. These are based on a wide range of available data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease.
In the reasonable worst-case planning scenario from late March, SAGE’s best estimate of the infection fatality ratio was approximately 1%, however this was highly age-dependent. Precise estimates of the case fatality ratio – the proportion of people with clinical symptoms who die – are much harder, as the proportion of cases who are asymptomatic is difficult to estimate. Due to the difficulty with ascertaining the proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic, modelling is based on estimates of the total number of infections in a population. At the time, the best estimate of the proportion of cases that were asymptomatic was 33%.
Estimates of mortality rates for those hospitalised were around 12%. However, again this was highly age-dependent, with 50% mortality in those hospitalised who require invasive ventilation.
SAGE’s estimate of the proportion of infections that required hospitalisation was 5% overall, but that this was also highly dependent on age. This reasonable worse-case planning scenario used an estimate for the number of patients requiring ventilation, mechanical or otherwise, of 30%. A copy of the SAGE paper Reasonable Worst-Case Planning Scenario – 29/03/2020 is attached.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the percentage of COVID-19 cases that lead to hospital admissions was applied to the forecast modelling used to inform their decision to place England under national restrictions in March; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (SAGE) is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to support decisions by the Government. The SAGE subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational use their own estimates of metrics such as asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, or infection fatality rates. These are based on a wide range of available data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease.
In the reasonable worst-case planning scenario from late March, SAGE’s best estimate of the infection fatality ratio was approximately 1%, however this was highly age-dependent. Precise estimates of the case fatality ratio – the proportion of people with clinical symptoms who die – are much harder, as the proportion of cases who are asymptomatic is difficult to estimate. Due to the difficulty with ascertaining the proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic, modelling is based on estimates of the total number of infections in a population. At the time, the best estimate of the proportion of cases that were asymptomatic was 33%.
Estimates of mortality rates for those hospitalised were around 12%. However, again this was highly age-dependent, with 50% mortality in those hospitalised who require invasive ventilation.
SAGE’s estimate of the proportion of infections that required hospitalisation was 5% overall, but that this was also highly dependent on age. This reasonable worse-case planning scenario used an estimate for the number of patients requiring ventilation, mechanical or otherwise, of 30%. A copy of the SAGE paper Reasonable Worst-Case Planning Scenario – 29/03/2020 is attached.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the percentage of COVID-19 cases that require mechanical ventilation was applied to the forecast modelling used to inform the decision to place England under national restrictions in March; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (SAGE) is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to support decisions by the Government. The SAGE subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational use their own estimates of metrics such as asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, or infection fatality rates. These are based on a wide range of available data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease.
In the reasonable worst-case planning scenario from late March, SAGE’s best estimate of the infection fatality ratio was approximately 1%, however this was highly age-dependent. Precise estimates of the case fatality ratio – the proportion of people with clinical symptoms who die – are much harder, as the proportion of cases who are asymptomatic is difficult to estimate. Due to the difficulty with ascertaining the proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic, modelling is based on estimates of the total number of infections in a population. At the time, the best estimate of the proportion of cases that were asymptomatic was 33%.
Estimates of mortality rates for those hospitalised were around 12%. However, again this was highly age-dependent, with 50% mortality in those hospitalised who require invasive ventilation.
SAGE’s estimate of the proportion of infections that required hospitalisation was 5% overall, but that this was also highly dependent on age. This reasonable worse-case planning scenario used an estimate for the number of patients requiring ventilation, mechanical or otherwise, of 30%. A copy of the SAGE paper Reasonable Worst-Case Planning Scenario – 29/03/2020 is attached.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the percentage of COVID-19 fatalities they applied to the forecasting models that were used to inform the decision to place England under national restrictions in March to address the COVID-19 pandemic; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency (SAGE) is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to support decisions by the Government. The SAGE subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational use their own estimates of metrics such as asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, or infection fatality rates. These are based on a wide range of available data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease.
In the reasonable worst-case planning scenario from late March, SAGE’s best estimate of the infection fatality ratio was approximately 1%, however this was highly age-dependent. Precise estimates of the case fatality ratio – the proportion of people with clinical symptoms who die – are much harder, as the proportion of cases who are asymptomatic is difficult to estimate. Due to the difficulty with ascertaining the proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic, modelling is based on estimates of the total number of infections in a population. At the time, the best estimate of the proportion of cases that were asymptomatic was 33%.
Estimates of mortality rates for those hospitalised were around 12%. However, again this was highly age-dependent, with 50% mortality in those hospitalised who require invasive ventilation.
SAGE’s estimate of the proportion of infections that required hospitalisation was 5% overall, but that this was also highly dependent on age. This reasonable worse-case planning scenario used an estimate for the number of patients requiring ventilation, mechanical or otherwise, of 30%. A copy of the SAGE paper Reasonable Worst-Case Planning Scenario – 29/03/2020 is attached.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the proportion of COVID-19 cases that are asymptomatic they applied to the forecasting models that were used to inform their decision to place England under national restrictions undtil 2 December; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency’s (SAGE) subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational, do not have a single estimate for asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, case hospitalisation rates, infection fatality rates, or case fatality rates. Individual modelling groups use their own estimates of these metrics, which are based on a wide range of data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease and further details are publicly available.
The Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Study has estimated that approximately 55% of those individuals who test positive do not record evidence of symptoms at or around the time of the test. This does not mean these individuals will not go on to develop symptoms or had symptoms previously.
Other SAGE evidence has shown that there is wide variation in the estimated proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic across different studies with the rapid review providing a pooled estimate, based on 22 studies, of 28% but with very wide confidence intervals.
NHS England use data from their daily COVID-19 situation report collection from individual hospital trusts to estimate current average length of stay and the proportion who require mechanical ventilation. In the run up to the national restrictions this gave an average length of stay of 7.7 days, of which 5.5% of those would be with mechanical ventilation.
The decision to re-introduce greater restrictions from 5 November until 2 December 2020 was based on a wide range of data, not just modelling estimates. These included analysis from the National Health Service on hospital capacity, the rapidly rising hospital admissions, and deaths, and the similar second waves seen across Europe.
SAGE papers from its meetings are published in an online only format on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the percentage of COVID-19 cases that lead to hospital admissions was applied to the forecast modelling used to inform their decision to place England under national restrictions until 2 December; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency’s (SAGE) subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational, do not have a single estimate for asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, case hospitalisation rates, infection fatality rates, or case fatality rates. Individual modelling groups use their own estimates of these metrics, which are based on a wide range of data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease and further details are publicly available.
The Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Study has estimated that approximately 55% of those individuals who test positive do not record evidence of symptoms at or around the time of the test. This does not mean these individuals will not go on to develop symptoms or had symptoms previously.
Other SAGE evidence has shown that there is wide variation in the estimated proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic across different studies with the rapid review providing a pooled estimate, based on 22 studies, of 28% but with very wide confidence intervals.
NHS England use data from their daily COVID-19 situation report collection from individual hospital trusts to estimate current average length of stay and the proportion who require mechanical ventilation. In the run up to the national restrictions this gave an average length of stay of 7.7 days, of which 5.5% of those would be with mechanical ventilation.
The decision to re-introduce greater restrictions from 5 November until 2 December 2020 was based on a wide range of data, not just modelling estimates. These included analysis from the National Health Service on hospital capacity, the rapidly rising hospital admissions, and deaths, and the similar second waves seen across Europe.
SAGE papers from its meetings are published in an online only format on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the percentage of COVID-19 cases that require mechanical ventilation was applied to the forecast modelling used to inform their decision to place England under national restrictions until 2 December; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency’s (SAGE) subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational, do not have a single estimate for asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, case hospitalisation rates, infection fatality rates, or case fatality rates. Individual modelling groups use their own estimates of these metrics, which are based on a wide range of data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease and further details are publicly available.
The Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Study has estimated that approximately 55% of those individuals who test positive do not record evidence of symptoms at or around the time of the test. This does not mean these individuals will not go on to develop symptoms or had symptoms previously.
Other SAGE evidence has shown that there is wide variation in the estimated proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic across different studies with the rapid review providing a pooled estimate, based on 22 studies, of 28% but with very wide confidence intervals.
NHS England use data from their daily COVID-19 situation report collection from individual hospital trusts to estimate current average length of stay and the proportion who require mechanical ventilation. In the run up to the national restrictions this gave an average length of stay of 7.7 days, of which 5.5% of those would be with mechanical ventilation.
The decision to re-introduce greater restrictions from 5 November until 2 December 2020 was based on a wide range of data, not just modelling estimates. These included analysis from the National Health Service on hospital capacity, the rapidly rising hospital admissions, and deaths, and the similar second waves seen across Europe.
SAGE papers from its meetings are published in an online only format on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate of the percentage of COVID-19 fatalities they applied to the forecasting models that were used to inform the decision to place England under further national restrictions to address the COVID-19 pandemic; and what was the evidence base used for this estimate.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency’s (SAGE) subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational, do not have a single estimate for asymptomatic case proportions, infection hospitalisation rates, case hospitalisation rates, infection fatality rates, or case fatality rates. Individual modelling groups use their own estimates of these metrics, which are based on a wide range of data sources, including testing data, hospital admission, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. Their models are regularly updated to fit to the observed transmission of the disease and further details are publicly available.
The Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Study has estimated that approximately 55% of those individuals who test positive do not record evidence of symptoms at or around the time of the test. This does not mean these individuals will not go on to develop symptoms or had symptoms previously.
Other SAGE evidence has shown that there is wide variation in the estimated proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic across different studies with the rapid review providing a pooled estimate, based on 22 studies, of 28% but with very wide confidence intervals.
NHS England use data from their daily COVID-19 situation report collection from individual hospital trusts to estimate current average length of stay and the proportion who require mechanical ventilation. In the run up to the national restrictions this gave an average length of stay of 7.7 days, of which 5.5% of those would be with mechanical ventilation.
The decision to re-introduce greater restrictions from 5 November until 2 December 2020 was based on a wide range of data, not just modelling estimates. These included analysis from the National Health Service on hospital capacity, the rapidly rising hospital admissions, and deaths, and the similar second waves seen across Europe.
SAGE papers from its meetings are published in an online only format on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Sugg on 3 April (HL6594), whether the Europe Whole Vehicle Type Approval system assesses the safety of semi-autonomous driving systems supplied on vehicle models, such as Tesla Autopilot; and which vehicles with such systems are currently approved for public sale and use in (1) the UK, and (2) the EU.
Answered by Baroness Sugg
The TESLA Model X and Model S have European Whole Vehicle Type Approvals (EWVTA) that were issued by the Netherlands. The UK is required to permit the registration and use of vehicles with EWVTA. The behaviour of the driver remains subject to national Traffic Law.
Regulation 104 of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 (as amended) requires that the driver is in such a position that he can have proper control of the vehicle. Rule 160 of the Highway Code advises that a driver should drive with both hands on the wheel where possible.
New requirements that limit the time that a driver may remove their hands from the steering control in vehicles equipped with automated lane steering have recently been introduced into Type Approval. An optical warning is required if the driver removes their hands for more than 15 seconds and this is reinforced with an acoustic warning if the period exceeds 30 seconds. If the driver does not respond to the warnings the automated lane steering function will cease to operate 1 minute after the driver removed their hands from the steering control.
The Type Approval requirements apply to new vehicle types from 1 April 2018.
The UK is leading a UNECE Technical Committee that is developing Type Approval requirements for software that will include provisions to identify where the software has been updated. It is expected that these new measures will be implemented in Type Approval during 2019.
Type Approval records do not specifically identify individual features of the steering system and the Government does not hold data concerning the number of vehicles approved with automated lane steering functions either in the UK or in Europe.