The Covid Inquiry has been accused of using questionable modelling that “overstates” the effectiveness of vaccines.

Prof Carl Heneghan, director of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Dr Tom Jefferson, a senior associate tutor at the university, have urged the UK’s statistics watchdog to open an inquiry.

“Yet the report itself acknowledges that these estimates are derived from mathematical models that rely on assumptions about vaccine efficacy, waning immunity, prior infection, behavioural responses, and hypothetical counterfactual scenarios that were never observed.”

The professors go on to say that the inquiry relies on “counterfactual modelling” and it gives the public “an impression of evidential certainty that does not exist”.

Read more: Covid inquiry accused of ‘overstating’ vaccine success. REALLY? I’m staggered