The 19th of July in the UK saw the relaxation of covid rules that have been in place for 18 months - social distancing requirements in venues, mask wearing in public will no longer be legally mandated.

There are a lot of questions about what this will mean for the pandemic, and in this episode of Talk Evidence Helen MacDonald, Joe Ross and Duncan Jarvies are joined by Iain Buchan, professor of public health in Liverpool, who has been involved in 2 key studies on covid transmission.

Firstly, lateral flow tests - the big questions has been how well do they work in the wild - and how well do they have to work, to be useful in test trace and isolate? Iain tells us about new research into the innova test.

Secondly, events - the football has shown that events can still be a big source of transmission, and the UK government put in place a number of trial events, all carefully monitored by public health researchers - Iain tells us about one nightclub test in Liverpool, and what we can glean from it.

Reading list;

Performance of the Innova SARS-CoV-2 antigen rapid lateral flow test in the Liverpool asymptomatic testing pilot: population based cohort study
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1637

The UK government's events programme
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/events-research-programme-phase-i-findings/events-research-programme-phase-i-findings#findings
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/979461/S1195_Science_framework_for_opening_up_group_events.pdf

Effect of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 on life expectancy across populations in the USA and other high income countries: simulations of provisional mortality data
https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1343

Optimizing Therapy to Prevent Avoidable Hospital Admissions in Multimorbid Older Adults (OPERAM): cluster randomised controlled trial
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1585

Efficacy, acceptability, and safety of muscle relaxants for adults with non-specific low back pain: systematic review and meta-analysis
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1446