With sufficient testing and co-ordination, reopening schools and businesses in areas without active outbreaks can be as effective as a wide lockdown in minimizing COVID-19 cases, according to a new model.
While the focus has been on containing ‘hot spots’ of COVID-19 outbreaks, understanding why some areas have few or no cases could point the way to a staged reopening that starts with these areas.
When considering how to exit lockdown, we need to think about people who have died from COVID-19 as well as those who have died because other health care was postponed.
In lower-income countries, 50-day cycles of lockdown with relaxed periods in between could strike a balance between controlling the virus and getting economies running again.
We should make more use of randomised controlled trials – usually used in medicine – to understand which measures were effective in controlling COVID-19.
It’s possible to evaluate countries’ readiness to lift their lockdowns, based on how well they managed the first wave of the pandemic, and how ready they are for a digital economy.
Marc Ambinder, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Research and investigative journalism call into question the authenticity of – and actual public support for – recent protests demanding governments lift lockdowns and ‘reopen’ the US economy.
The UK has acted tactically to avert disaster – the basic problem has not been solved and there is no exit in sight. But there is a long-term prospect of things changing for the better.