Thought of the Day - November 26 - The Liverpudlian Test

As talked about earlier this month, a number of South-East Asian countries are faring well in their battle with the Corona Virus ( Thought of the Day - November 15 - By the Numbers ). Among them is China. A number of possible factors have been mentioned as contributing to China's success in getting the virus spread under control:

• a centralised epidemic response system that can act quickly;

• ageing parents tend to live with/near their children rather than care homes;

• technology was utilized - such as drones that rebuked Chinese citizens who were not following the rules;

• production of clinical gowns and surgical masks was ramped-up and, moreover, the Chinese readily adopted mask wearing;

• and mass testing.

That said case clusters still continue to appear. Thus China continues to use its heavy-handed, top-down approach each time new cases of local transmission are found — shutting down schools and hospitals, locking down residential communities and entire neighbourhoods, and testing millions - to stamp it out.

At the other end of the spectrum, the UK has struggled; consistently in the Top 10 countries for cases, hospitalizations and deaths. At the beginning of November they started a grand experiment, known as Operation Moonshot, to see if they could lock-down and test-out the virus from Liverpool. This is a pilot, ahead of Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, Bristol, and parts of London.

Bringing in the military to help, over 200,000 people, out of 1/2M in Liverpool, have been tested so far using lateral-flow rapid tests (anyone testing positive needs to be confirmed with a PCR test). The city council said 800 asymptomatic cases have been picked up. Close contacts of people who test positive are offered the chance to take daily tests for a week instead of going into quarantine.

There have been issues, protests and limited participation from parts of the city, but the latest figures show that Liverpool's infection rate is down almost 40% in the past week. It is too early to tell whether this is a result of the lock-down, an indirect consequence of the focus on COVID prevention, or directly related to the testing, but things look promising.

Cheers

Cliff