The Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group (ARG) was born over the weekend of 7-8 March 2020. As the Lombardy region in Italy was being shut down, our group of concerned actuaries, epidemiologists and public health experts came together with the support and encouragement of the then President-elect, Tan Suee Chieh.
Over two years later the group continues to contribute to the COVID-19 discussion, with a presence on social media platforms and via blogs and bulletins on the group’s website.
Over that time the group has engaged with both written and broadcast media, academics and government, and has become regarded in the profession and more widely as an objective and trusted source of information and analysis.
The Friday Report has been one of the group’s key outputs through the pandemic. So far, we’ve published 66 editions, initially sending out one a week and more recently one per fortnight. Since our first report, we have aimed to provide a comprehensive and unbiased (but hopefully interesting) digest of the latest key reports on all aspects of the pandemic.
The Friday Report editorial team is delighted to be speaking at the upcoming IFoA Conference in June. We will give a retrospective of the themes that have emerged in the Friday Reports over the course of the pandemic – data, modelling (good and bad), vaccination, treatments, and the emergence and behaviour of the various Greek letter-named variants. We will also give our view on likely hot topics in the coming months. We will conclude the talk with a debate on whether an analogue to either the ARG or the Friday Report could be useful for other activities relevant to the Actuarial Profession.
Watch recordings of the sessions at the IFoA Conference on the IFoA's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
