Soon it will become obvious to most that this is the only strategy that works:
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China’s tough lockdown and social distancing measures in Wuhan and other provinces appear to have successfully ended coronavirus infections and may chart a route back to normal life, according to a report from the University of London’s Imperial College.
The report, from Prof Neil Ferguson and his team who have been the main modellers of the epidemic for the UK and other governments, suggests it is possible to lift the social distancing restrictions, as China has begun to do, without a resurgence of the epidemic.
Prof Chris Donnelly of Imperial and Oxford Universities, one of the team, said:
At this difficult time, these results suggest that, after containment, a carefully managed and monitored relaxation of effective large-scale lockdowns may be possible even before an effective vaccine is available.
Ferguson said their analysis “provides some hope for countries currently in various levels of lockdown that once case numbers are brought to low levels, it might be possible to relax social distancing – provided equal measures to limit the risk of the resurgence of transmission are introduced.”
But, he stressed, relaxing the lockdown policies would depend on “rapid and ubiquitous testing and rigorous case and contact isolation policies”.
That would mean testing everyone with symptoms and following up and isolating their contacts, in order to stamp out any further flare-ups of infection.