Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s think tank are calling for a highly localized approach to lifting the lockdown.

the economic and health costs of lockdown are so immense says the report is that we need to get as many people back to work and have as much of “normal” life return as possible.

Using new modelling to assess the extent of outbreaks in different parts of the U.K., Blair’s institute concludes: “Some areas of the country have substantial headroom to increase mobility safely, while a minority need to restrict mobility further to slow the spread of the virus. London, Merseyside, the West Midlands and Bristol could all increase mobility by around 10 percentage points, but in Slough and York it appears already to be too high.”

Monitoring these mobility levels in real time could allow different parts of the country to take steps to increase or decrease mobility in their area, optimising wellbeing within a total “mobility budget”.

The model says the report could maximise economic activity without the virus running out of control, thus saving many jobs and businesses.

It would allow a quicker intervention to stop the spread of the virus, maximising the health benefits and minimising the economic damage and would facilitate locally targeted measures to keep the virus under control without the need to resort to heavy-handed national restrictions that would be unnecessarily costly in areas unaffected by an outbreak.

The authors also say that it would allow real-time experimentation, so that the whole country can learn from the experience of different areas as new containment measures are rolled out.

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