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  Strategies adopted globally to mitigate the threat of COVID-19 have primarily involved lockdown measures with substantial economic and social costs with varying degrees of success. Morbidity patterns of COVID-19 variants have a strong association with age, while restrictive lockdown measures have association with negative mental health outcomes in some age groups. Reduced economic prospects may also afflict some age cohorts more than others. Motivated by this, we propose a model to describe COVID-19 community spread incorporating the role of age-specific social interactions. Through a flexible parameterisation of an age-structured deterministic Susceptible Exposed Infectious Removed (SEIR) model, we provide a means for characterising different forms of lockdown which may impact specific age groups differently. Social interactions are represented through age group to age group...

A robust health technology assessment (HTA) system is required for the assessment of COVID-19 interventions during the pandemic, says the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE) Review Group, in an article published in Value in Health.The NCPE is the national HTA agency in Ireland which assesses the cost effectiveness and budget impact of new medicines submitted by drug companies (applicants) for reimbursement by the state health payer.Some trials being performed during the COVI-19 pandemic have been temporarily halted or undergone protocol changes, some healthcare services may have been unavailable to patients, and subjects in one treatment arm may have been at increased risk of exposure to COVID-19, resulting in limitations in data leading to uncertainty in HTA assessments that may affect the willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold and the availability of new treatments. Methods...

Editor Over 42 000 colorectal cancer (CRC) cases are diagnosed in the UK each year. Multiple hospital and patient factors are involved in the safe functioning of colorectal cancer (CRC) services, most of which the COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted 1 . The literature so far has sought to predict the potential disruption in surgical and cancer care during the pandemic 2 , 3 , 4 . We have evaluated the degree of adherence and deviation from the best practice guidelines and to describe the modifications to the colorectal cancer services during the COVID‐19 pandemic.We designed a service evaluation survey, based on national guidelines for CRC care delivery. This was distributed to all hospitals that manage colorectal cancer in the UK and Ireland and completed by the lead colorectal consultant. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise data. K‐means clustering algorithm...