BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello and welcome to more or less the show that's determined to get the R number for Suspects

Statistics well below one. I'm Tim Harford and this week we get a first look at the evidence

for the much-trumpeted Covid treatment dexamethasone. Which children are getting a solid home

school experience and who's falling through the educational cracks. And as various customer-facing

businesses start to reopen, what is happening to the economy and what might happen next?

Stephanie Flanders herself is on the case. But first it was the VE Day Street celebrations in

early May that in some places got a little bit too up close and personal. Then, later on that

month, the glorious Spring Bank holiday weather brought thousands of people out onto the beaches.

A short time after that, the Black Lives Matter protests filled the streets of cities such as

Bristol, Oxford and London. The health secretary Matt Hancock warned that gathering in large groups

risked spreading the virus. But we've waited, we've watched the data, and no spike has appeared.

So why is that we wondered? Ruth Alexander has been looking into this, hello Ruth.

Hi Tim, yet it seems kind of surprising that there's been no spike in the national or local data.

But I've consulted various experts and they confirmed that indeed so far the hasn't.

A senior research fellow at Sheffield School of Health, Colin Angus, pointed out that there have

been a few small spikes in cases in a few local authorities in the last couple of weeks.

But there's no obvious pattern to these, he says, that links to either the protests or crowded

beaches. There is a caveat though that local data only includes the results of the testing of

NHS staff and hospital patients, so not the wider community. But Colin Angus says you'd expect to see

a spike in positive tests in the community reflected in an increase in hospital cases.

So why haven't these gatherings, in some cases mass gatherings, resulted in a noticeable increase

...