Don’t blame Chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out for second Covid wave says epidemiologist Neil Ferguson

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy One of Britain’s most well-known epidemiologists has said that he has not seen “convincing evidence” Rishi Sunak’s controversial meal subsidy scheme is responsible for the UK’s subsequent spike in Covid cases. But Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said it was “probably misleading” to identify individual government policies as responsible for the second wave of cases that has hit the UK. “I haven't seen any convincing evidence that Eat Out to Help Out made any appreciable difference to risk,” Professor Ferguson told Econ Films’ CoronaNomics show. But a new paper last week from Thiemo Fetzer of Warwick University’s Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy used an analysis of microdata on the number of restaurant visits and subsequent infections and also local rainfall patterns to suggest EOTHO had been responsible for up to 17 per cent of new infection clusters.