The Government’s strategy is to tackle spikes of the virus with local lockdown measures.
Leicester was the first city to be put back under lockdown, followed by the introduction of lockdown measures across Greater Manchester, eastern Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire.
Lockdown measures were also implemented in Preston last week.
A study published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health simulated what would happen in “optimistic” and “pessimistic” scenarios.
In the former, assuming 68 percent of contacts of people who tested positive could be traced, while the latter had 40 percent coverage.
The authors found that “with increased levels of testing… and effective contact tracing and isolation, an epidemic rebound might be prevented”.
But in a worst-case scenario, a second wave could be 2.3 times higher than the first.
