The computer modellers whose predictions about the pandemic prompted the national lockdown are working with gamers to release a simulation website.

Professor Neil Ferguson, who leads the team at Imperial College London, is working with John Carmack, the lead programmer of Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake, to create Covid-sim, which could go public as early as this week.

“We’ve been working with Microsoft very intensely,” said Ferguson. “The aim is to produce a website where the public or governments or public health agencies can ask about the state of the epidemic in their country and see the impact of different interventions.”

Ferguson leads a team of mathematical modellers at Imperial — about six of whom have the coronavirus, including him. Their projections of how the pandemic