Prof Sylvia Richardson, President of the Royal Statistical Society and Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge University

Tackling COVID-19: Statistics in action

In this talk, my aim is first to look back at 2020 and 2021 and review the multi-facet engagement of statisticians and the RSS in the Covid-19 crisis. I will highlight different aspects of the work of the RSS Covid-19 Task Force and briefly describe the RSS-Turing engagement with the Joint Biosecurity Centre.

 In a second part, I will focus on the statistical issues related to the evaluation and deployment of rapid diagnostic tests. One key area where rapid tests have been deployed is schools, and I will describe how this has motived some recent simulation work to understand the relative merits of different policies of deployment of rapid testing in schools.

In my final remarks, I will move away from Covid-19 and look towards the future landscape for statistics in the fast-moving world of data science. I will give a brief update on an initiative, launched in January, which aims to develop at pace a strategy of visible engagement of the RSS with the ecosystem of Data Science, building on the strong growth in this area and the central position of statistics