[BostonCard]

Thank you all for the information; this thread has been really interesting and useful.



I have some questions I hope you can help me understand: how are the lockdowns going to work (particularly in Italy)? How long will they be in place for? 1 month? 2 months? More? What events or information would trigger a return to normal movement? What would prevent a second surge after normalizing movement? Would that just result in more of these cycles, and a long string of cancelled/postponed events? It seems we are some time away from a vaccine or treatment, so I am wondering about the effectiveness and strategy behind these approaches.



Thanks.

Yes, these are all very important questions.  The most conservative way to go would be to wait two incubation periods (28 days) after the last patient has cleared the virus (as documented by two negative tests).  That was the criteria used for declaring the end of the ebola epidemic:

https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/de...la-end/en/

However, Ebola was different for two reasons, the case fatality rate was much higher than for Covid-19 (even if you accept that the current estimates are not accurate, they are nowhere near the estimates for Ebola), and secondly there was not a reservoir of undetected Ebola cases.  This made the Ebola epidemic at once easier and harder to control.  And I don't think it would be practical to enforce a quarantine that long.

China probably provides a bit of a roadmap for the return to normality, as they are slowly allowing increasing activity as the threat recedes.  I do wonder what the chances of a second spike are if they get back too quickly.  Widespread surveillance can help, but you need the test kits and the capacity to run them.

One step at a time, though.  Let's get on top of the current epidemic first, and then worry about how to get back to normal.

BC

[BostonCard]

Thank you all for the information; this thread has been really interesting and useful.



I have some questions I hope you can help me understand: how are the lockdowns going to work (particularly in Italy)? How long will they be in place for? 1 month? 2 months? More? What events or information would trigger a return to normal movement? What would prevent a second surge after normalizing movement? Would that just result in more of these cycles, and a long string of cancelled/postponed events? It seems we are some time away from a vaccine or treatment, so I am wondering about the effectiveness and strategy behind these approaches.



Thanks.

Yes, these are all very important questions.  The most conservative way to go would be to wait two incubation periods (28 days) after the last patient has cleared the virus (as documented by two negative tests).  That was the criteria used for declaring the end of the ebola epidemic:

https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/de...la-end/en/

However, Ebola was different for two reasons, the case fatality rate was much higher than for Covid-19 (even if you accept that the current estimates are not accurate, they are nowhere near the estimates for Ebola), and secondly there was not a reservoir of undetected Ebola cases.  This made the Ebola epidemic at once easier and harder to control.  And I don't think it would be practical to enforce a quarantine that long.

China probably provides a bit of a roadmap for the return to normality, as they are slowly allowing increasing activity as the threat recedes.  I do wonder what the chances of a second spike are if they get back too quickly.  Widespread surveillance can help, but you need the test kits and the capacity to run them.

One step at a time, though.  Let's get on top of the current epidemic first, and then worry about how to get back to normal.

BC