There's every reason to believe that the current lockdown will take us no further. The economy is in dire straits and millions of lives are at risk. There is a public health approach to pandemics that has proved its worth in the past: carry out large-scale testing, isolate infected people, trace their contacts and quarantine them in designated areas. Recent data from Wuhan show that containment, hospitalization of seriously ill people and self-isolation of mild cases are not sufficient measures to bring the R0 below 1, unless they are complemented by strict contact tracing and centralized quarantine.
Melanie Heard, our short-term collaborator, has written 2 analyses for the French think-tank Terra Nova on these two measures:
- Strict contact tracing is likely to be much more effective if it's application-based.
Read full article here.
- Centralized quarantine requires separate facilities to accommodate and monitor those isolated with mild illness and those subject to quarantine. Create infirmaries using empty convention centers, for example, to care for people with mild to moderate illness and low risk; an isolation infirmary for all patients will reduce transmission to family members. Transform empty hotels into quarantine centers to house exposed people and separate them from the general population for two weeks. This requires a great deal of cooperation and careful balancing of rights. It's not an end in itself, but it is a proven containment strategy.
Read full article here.
The illustration for this story is a depiction of a contact search network in Harbin, China, taken from a tweet recent.
