COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group
Variants

The Friday Report – Issue 65

The Friday Report is our regular fortnightly update with a summary of the key papers and analyses that we’ve looked at recently. In Friday Report 65 we report on:

  • Valneva vaccine approved by MHRA for ages 18-50
  • Moderna vaccine approval extended to include ages 5-11
  • Progress update on Spring booster rollout and vaccines for age 5-11
  • New visualisation of case rates by variant
  • Omicron sub-lineages – the five constellations
  • Paxlovid added to PANORAMIC study
  • Expanded list of official COVID symptoms
  • ONS infection survey shows prevalence is falling
  • Booster effectiveness against symptomatic infection
  • Child hospitalisations by vaccine status in the USA
  • BA.2 case fatality rate is similar to ancestral strain in unvaccinated people
  • Mortality rates in England and Wales in Q1 2022

And finally, we consider canine longevity.

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John Roberts

Independent Consultant

John is an independent consultant who has spent 37 years in the life industry, including 17 years at Canada Life and more recently 8 years at Zurich Insurance Group, where he was part of the team that established its corporate risk business, now well established in the market. Following that he was Head of the Life Pricing team at Zurich for 5 years, overseeing a wide range of wealth and protection propositions.

At Zurich he helped establish its small pension scheme longevity swap proposition, which involved setting up simultaneous reinsurance transactions to mirror the client contracts. He has most recently continued with this line of interest as a consultant, supporting Lloyds Banking Group in establishing its first longevity swap transactions.

John is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

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Adele Groyer

Research and Analytics Actuary - Gen Re

Adele Groyer is a Research and Analytics Actuary at Gen Re. She was previously responsible for the UK and Ireland pricing team, conducting general research and producing client-specific quotations for Life, Disability, Long Term Care and Critical Illness business. She is a member of the CMI Assurances Committee. Before joining Gen Re in 2008, she worked for Old Mutual in South Africa. Adele holds a Bachelor of Business Science degree from the University of Cape Town and became a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in 2005.

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Matthew Fletcher

Senior Consultant - AON

Matt has over 20 years’ consultancy experience, including over 10 years as a specialist in mortality and longevity. He works in Aon’s Demographic Horizons team, advising insurance companies and pension funds on setting best estimates and evaluating risk for longevity and other demographic assumptions, both in the UK and overseas.

Matt chairs the CMI Self-Administered Pension Schemes (SAPS) Committee, which produces mortality tables that are used extensively in the pensions and insurance industries.

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Dan Ryan

Chief Science Officer - COIOS Research

Dan is an epidemiologist and digital demographer with 25 years experience in the insurance industry.

He led global multi-disciplinary research teams at Swiss Re and Willis Towers Watson in diverse areas including forward-looking risk models, behavioural science and the rapid development of digital ecosystems that will transform how insurance is distributed and how risk is assessed, managed and mitigated.

Dan is an internationally recognised expert on demographic trends, emerging insurance risks and digital innovation. He pioneered the concept of disease-based models of mortality using electronic health records and was a key contributor to the development of the Pandemic Emergency Facility with the Institute of Medicine, WHO and World Bank.

Dan has an MA in Medical Sciences from Cambridge University and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University. He is currently engaged in a DHealth at the University of Bath that is examining the role of medication adherence in improving the management of hypertension in stroke.

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