“It’s really hard but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” she adds. And compared with studies of individual countries, it should also allow them to design models that can make more accurate predictions about new phases of the pandemic and across many nations.īut untangling cause and effect is extremely challenging, in part because circumstances differ in each country and because there is uncertainty over how much people adhere to measures, cautions Eggo. Combining data from around the world will allow researchers to compare countries’ responses. Models based on real data should be more nuanced than those that, at the start of the outbreak, necessarily predicted the effect of interventions mainly using assumptions. Researchers are already working on models that use data from individual countries to understand the effect of control measures. It’s about ‘what do we do now’?” says Rosalind Eggo, a mathematical modeller at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). This information will be essential to governments as they design strategies to return life to normal, while keeping transmission low to prevent second waves of infection. Researchers hope that, ultimately, they will be able to accurately predict how adding and removing control measures affects transmission rates and infection numbers. Working out the effectiveness of the unprecedented measures implemented worldwide to limit the spread of the coronavirus is now one of scientists’ most pressing questions. Special report: The simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19
But the paper, published 1 this month, couldn’t tease apart the effects of the various measures and behavioural changes happening at the same time. Researchers studying Hong Kong’s approach have already found that swift surveillance, quarantine and social-distancing measures, such as the use of face masks and school closures, helped to cut coronavirus transmission - measured by the average number of people each infected person infects, or R - to close to the critical level of 1 by early February. With a population of 7.5 million, it has reported just 4 deaths.
CORONA TRACKER INDIA ORG HOW TO
Hong Kong seems to have given the world a lesson in how to effectively curb COVID-19. Scientists are scrambling to work out what effect specific measures, such as social distancing, have in slowing the spread of COVID-19.
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