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.
Articles on Lockdown exit strategy
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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.
Second waves of coronavirus cases are far more likely to be driven by poverty and economic necessity.
Research into life on the trading floor reveals the importance of being in the room for things to run smoothly.
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.
National models on the spread of COVID-19 have helped us through this crisis. But we’ll need local models to get us through the next stage.
The equation ‘COVID alert level = R (rate of infection) + number of infections’ simply does not add up to a number between one and five.
Federal authorities have input, but states reign supreme – unless they decide to let local governments make the call.
Everyone wants less time commuting, better email etiquette and new places to work from.
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.
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.
Lockdowns will have to be lifted cautiously and new waves of infection are likely.
A crib sheet for Dominic Raab.
Ending pandemic restrictions too early could cause a second wave of disease.
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.
Top contributors
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Professor of International Relations, University of Glasgow
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Associate Professor of Public Affairs, Arizona State University
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Research Fellow, Institute of Global Health, Imperial College London
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PhD Candidate in Anthropology, UCL
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Richard Doll Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine, University of Oxford
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Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London
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Professor of Economics, De Montfort University
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Lecturer in Probability and Statistics and Senior Research Fellow in Infectious Disease Modelling, University of Oxford
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Associate Professor, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
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Professor of Sociology, FAcSS, Durham University
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Adjunct Professor, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney
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Professor of Molecular Virology and Director of the Wolfson Centre for Global Virus Research, University of Nottingham
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Professor of Biology, University of St Andrews
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Executive Fellow in Digital Security, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
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Associate Professor in Viral Immunology, University of Birmingham