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One way the virus hurts the economy is by disrupting the supply of labour, goods and services. People fall ill. Schools close, forcing parents to stay at home. Quarantines might force workplaces to shut entirely. This is accompanied by sizeable demand effects. Some are unavoidable: sick people go out less and buy fewer goods. Public-health measures, too, restrict economic activity. Putting more money into consumers’ hands will do little to offset this drag, unlike your garden-variety downturn. Activity will resume only once the outbreak runs its course.

Starting on Tuesday, more than 300 Amazon employees have pledged to stay home from work, according to worker rights group United for Respect, as frustrations mount over protections and support for Amazon employees. Workers claim the company has failed to provide enough face masks for workers, did not implement regular temperature checks it promised at warehouses, and has refused to give workers paid sick leave.

Local public health officials and medics have complained that the government has not supplied sufficiently detailed information on local infections, the lack of which they say hampers attempts to quash new outbreaks.

Councils have been promised postcode-level data for weeks from Public Health England and the newly created Joint Biosecurity Centre. But some public health directors are concerned the centre has not been sharing data about potential clusters of infections with councils, which could enforce school or workplace closures that could suppress an outbreak at an early stage.

“If the only data you’re getting is ‘in this population of 90,000 people there are 40 positives’ it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. If Leicester had got the data sooner they could have had a fighting chance of managing it,” said one public health director, who asked not to be named.