Academic paper finds links to government scheme and increase in cases over summer
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The Treasury has rejected claims that the “eat out to help out” scheme could have directly caused almost a fifth of new coronavirus case clusters over the summer, after an academic paper concluded the policy might have led to thousands of new cases.
The paper, from Thiemo Fetzer, an economist at the University of Warwick, found that the scheme – in which the government funded discounts on food and nonalcoholic drinks at participating businesses on Monday to Wednesday in August – was closely linked to an increase in cases over the summer.
