Another problem with the tiered restrictions that were implemented during the autumn of 2020 was that it was not fully clear what criteria would cause a particular area to be placed in a given tier, nor what would be required for it to exit a particular tier. At times, these decisions felt arbitrary and untransparent. The newly-formed Joint Biosecurity Centre was the source of data and analysis on which these important decisions were made. However, the Joint Biosecurity Centre is a particularly opaque organisation, lacking even the transparency that had come to be displayed eventually by SAGE.189 Dr Clare Gardiner, who was appointed Director of the Joint Biosecurity Centre in June 2020 (but who has now resigned from the post) told our inquiry: The sorts of data that we look at are case rates and positivity–the number of people who have tested positive–in different age groups. […] we are also looking keenly at the number of people being admitted to hospital.190