Coronavirus

(asked on 15th July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what constitutes a COVID-19 (1) pilot scheme, (2) event research programme, (3) trial; and how many there have been of each of these in the last two years.


Answered by
Lord Kamall Portrait
Lord Kamall
This question was answered on 29th September 2021

A pilot scheme tests a policy before it becomes operational to identify any delivery challenges and how these can be overcome ahead of wider deployment. A pilot is limited in its delivery by time period, volume, context or geography, or any combination of these. Within NHS Test and Trace there have been 158 pilot schemes.

The Events Research Programme (ERP) is a single cross-Government programme which ran a number of event pilots. It aims to examine the risk of transmission of COVID-19 from attendance at events to enable people to attend a range of events safely. The programme is exploring how a combination of testing and non-pharmaceutical interventions or actions that people can take to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, can inform decisions on safely lifting restrictions at events. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is currently leading the ERP, which has conducted 42 pilot events within the programme.

Trials are put in place to identify solutions to a specific research question. They are run within formal research governance and are listed on an open science platform, available to the scientific community. The outcomes of trials are prepared for peer-reviewed publications. Information on the number of all such COVID-19 trials is not held centrally and can only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

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