Questions have been raised as to why restaurants and pubs that serve food might be closed to control outbreaks of Covid-19, when many outbreaks are in private households, and very few confirmed outbreaks have been linked to settings such as pubs and restaurants.
However, a leading public health expert has said that while the question is understandable, it arises due to a misinterpretation of the data.
In a Twitter thread, Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team's Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said that the idea that very few cases are connected to such social settings "is misreading and misinterpreting the data on outbreaks and clusters".