Team members have a mathematics and programming background, enabling them to examine whether these models' assumptions are valid.

As part of this independent work, our team has provided input to University College London's Tim Colbourn on his draft paper on mass-testing in the UK. We also contacted Neil Ferguson of Imperial College and asked him whether he had looked at the option of isolating the elderly as part of his model. I have alluded to his response in an earlier article.

Neil Ferguson has provided his model and source code to a few independent experts. We understand from news reports that he expects to publish it soon on Github, which will enable our team to more thoroughly examine his model.

In the meanwhile, Nirmesh Mehta from our team has made a few observations about the Imperial College model that I believe are wroth sharing at this stage to inform public debate.