nCoV: Understanding the dynamics of policy development and healthcare worker behaviour in the UK during the Covid-19 public health emergency

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In an infectious disease outbreak public health policymakers are under tremendouspressure, especially from the media. They must respond rapidly to and take decisionswhich impact enormously on healthcare provision.We are studying conventional and social media trends during the Covid-19 epidemic. Wewill link these to changes in UK policy, gaining unique insights through collaboration withkey policy players. These include members of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) that advises the Government, and Public Health England leaders.These expertsare recording information on key meetings and events, and giving regular interviews so wecapture their perspectives in real-time.We will also examine the impact of the policy changes on healthcare workers in generalpractice and hospitals, through interviews and observations. We will learn theirperspective on delivering care during the epidemic, and how they perceive the changes inpolicy. These findings will be fed back to policymakers during the outbreak.Our approach is novel because policy decisions are usually only studied after an event,making the findings less reliable. Our team have all the necessary expertise and havealready started the work, by using emergency reserve funding.