A new report from Warwick University suggests that one of the ways that the UK could ease its lockdown measures and unlock its economy in the face of COVID-19 is by removing restrictions on 20-to-30-year-olds who do not live with their parents.

The paper, co-written by two professors of behavioural science, Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee, suggests that with no exit strategy, the UK's economy will continue to struggle under lockdown and sending those who are least at risk from the new coronavirus back to work could be one of the ways out.

"The idea to release 20-to-30-year-olds is because the young, statistically speaking, are the safest among all of us," says Powdthavee, who helped write "The case for releasing the young from lockdown: A briefing paper for policymakers".

"Also they are basically the group that are hardest hit financially by the lockdown. So really by releasing the young, we can minimize the fatality risk and also the risk to the economy."

According to a recent report released by Institute for Fiscal Studies, a UK economics think tank, people aged under 25 are about two-and-a-half times as likely to work in a sector that is now shut down as other UK employees.

Powdthavee calculates that there are approximately 4.2 million UK individuals who fall into this 20-30 age band, and 2.6 million of them work within the private sector, and are therefore likely to be harshly effected by the lockdown.

He believes that if the government could get younger members of society to cooperate with such a scheme, it could translate to about 13 billion pounds a year.

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"Basically, the young can retrain," says Powdthavee. "They can start by maybe reopening restaurants again, doing our grocery shopping for us, and maybe some manufacturing places could open, so there are many opportunities."

As to why people within the 30- 45-age bracket have been factored out of the Warwick report, Powdthavee explains:

"Obviously, we're not really fixed on a 20-to-30-year-old age band. It could be expanded; it could be contracted. It really depends on the risk. We know that the risk goes up quite exponentially as you go up with age group. So really is this up to the government to decide how many more deaths they could tolerate in terms of releasing people."

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However, middle aged workers and those older could also play a vital part within such a scheme:

"We believe that there are still roles for senior citizens, from working remotely from home in the roles of supervisors, managers or line managers, as the mentors for the young so they don't have been risk the fatality risk themselves."

Powdthavee says that key workers would probably have to keep working under the plan, but maintains that in comparison to other scenarios for dealing with the lockdown, kickstarting a young economy could be the safest.

"We are thinking about different possibilities all the time. We just believe that the alternatives look really, really bad," says Powdthavee, pointing to the two main options, releasing everybody at the same time or keeping everyone locked down for as long as it takes to find a vaccine.

"I think the fatality risk of releasing everybody is a lot higher than releasing just the young and I think the risk to the economy could also be great if we were to keep everybody locked down for far too long," says Powdthavee.

Without a viable vaccine still in the distance and the financial impact starting to take its toll, the UK government will be looking for any options to release the constraints on its economy, and the sooner the better.

As Powdthavee says himself of the economic quandary the COVID-19 lockdown has created: "I don't think it will go away anytime soon."

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