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The Treasury has rejected claims that the “eat out to help” scheme could have directly caused nearly a fifth of new clusters of coronavirus cases over the summer, after an academic paper concluded that the policy could have given result in thousands of new cases.
The paper, by Thiemo Fetzer, an economist at the University of Warwick, found that the scheme, in which the government funded discounts on food and non-alcoholic beverages at participating companies from Monday to Wednesday in August, was closely linked to an increase in the cases of the summer.
The coronavirus spread faster in areas with many “eat out to help” restaurants, Fetzer found, and infections in those areas declined after the plan came to an end.
Fetzer used the rain to try to estimate whether the increase was caused by the program. It found that in areas that had a lot of rain during lunch and dinner Monday through Wednesday of that month, fewer people ate out and fewer people were infected. The same pattern was not visible if it rained on other days of the week, suggesting that the scheme itself was directly responsible for the increase in infections.
“Empirical estimates suggest that the EOHO scheme may be responsible for around 8 to 17% of all newly detected Covid-19 clusters (at least two new infections in the same area) that emerge during August and early September in the United Kingdom “, Fetzer. concludes.
Given the dramatic increase in Covid-19 infections in the UK in recent weeks, the likely changes in consumer behavior due to increased infection risks and the consequent economic damage this generates suggests that the EOHO scheme may have indirect economic and public health costs that far outweigh their short-term economic benefits. “
But a Treasury spokesman rejected the economist’s findings. “We do not recognize these figures, which, as the study itself admits, are calculations from the back of the envelope.
“Many other European counterparts have seen an increase in cases,” added the spokesperson, “regardless of whether similar measures have been introduced for the hotel industry. We continue to work closely with companies to help them stay safe from Covid. “
Jonathan Portes, an economics professor at King’s College London, said Warwick’s paper was “methodologically sound.”
“Thiemo is a highly respected econometrician and has made the obvious checks. The estimated impacts are plausible. It is test? No. There are many potential confounders, in particular different mechanisms by which rainfall could influence infection independently of EOHO. So it’s not final, but I think the burden of proof is now on the defenders of EOHO. “
Portes also criticized the Treasury for not taking the claim seriously, calling its response “childish and unprofessional.”
“I would have expected better from a department that claims to take economics seriously,” he added.
Fetzer is not the first to suggest that the government’s plan, which paid half the price of a meal at a restaurant, up to £ 10 per person, could have had dangerous consequences. In September, Toby Phillips, a public policy researcher at the University of Oxford, noted that while “transmission rates were already increasing in early August,” there was a “rapid acceleration in the proportion of positive cases detected in early August. September”. consistent with cases where the infection occurred in mid-August.
“It’s certainly worth considering the effect of a £ 10 discount at the pub,” added Phillips, “and the effect of concentrating people’s outings on just three days a week.”
