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OUR PLAN TO REBUILD: The UK Government’s COVID-19 recovery strategy
1. The current situation
Phase one COVID-19 is a new and invisible threat. It has spread to almost every country in the world. The spread of the virus has been rapid. In the UK at its maximum, the number of patients in intensive care was estimated to be doubling every 3-4 days. This type of exponential growth would have overwhelmed the NHS were it not contained (as shown in Figure 1).
Figure 1: Illustrative profile of the epidemic under different approaches Illustrative impact of social and behavioural interventions lasting several months on a Reasonable Worst Case epidemic.