Analysis from Cardiff, Nottingham and Oxford Universities finds "very little gain" in continuing total lockdown

An academic paper from 2020-04-15 models various scenarios to investigate time-dependent strategies of handling the epidemic taking into account the needs of the elderly and those with special medical conditions. Main findings include:

Very little gain, in terms of the projected hospital bed occupancy and expected numbers of death,of continuing the lock-down beyond April 13, provided the isolation of older and vulnerable people continues and the public carries on some level of isolation in the next 2-3 months,

• Isolation of the group of vulnerable people during the next 2-3 months should be one of the main priorities

• The epidemic should almost completely finish in July, no global second wave should be expected,except areas where the first wave is almost absent.

Source: Comparison of different exit scenarios from the lock-down for COVID-19 epidemic in the UK and assessing uncertainty of the predictions, Anatoly Zhigljavsky, Roger Whitaker, Ivan Fesenko, Kobi Kremnizer, Jack Noonan

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.09.20059451v1.full.pdf