COVID19 and Social Mitigation Cells programme

Professor Adrian Davis is working with a new group looking at COVID19 and Social Mitigation Cells. The programme is being coordinated by Public Health Scotland (which came into existence today – good or bad timing!). There are 6 cells, one being Sustainability and Transport. The remit is to support policy makers and practitioners to mitigate the wider (ie. non-viral, non healthcare-related) population health consequences of the pandemic, including the unintended consequences of current control measures to suppress transmission. An example of the latter may be increased driving speed with low motorised traffic volumes and risk of crashes leading to avoidable burdens on the NHS. This may be aggravated as people walking on narrow pavements move into the carriageway in order to observe social distancing.