Fig. 2.

Impact of a two-week precautionary break during half-term on the dynamics of the full age-structured model. Results are from a single simulation using the median of the posterior parameter estimates from model fitting performed in September 2020. The columns are for four different underlying epidemiological growth rates $r\approx 0.02,0.03,0.05$ and 0.07, while within each panel the colours correspond to different rates of decline during the half-term break (from top to bottom in each graph the lines are: dashed black, no-control $s=-r$; blue $s=0$; green $s=0.02$; purple $s=0.045$; gold $s=0.06$). The top row shows the number of new infections in the UK, which experiences the most immediate impact of the break; the middle row shows the number of daily hospitalised infections; while the lower row shows the daily mortality. Inset into each figure are the number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths over the period 24th October 2020 to 1st January 2021. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)