Public reaction to the threat of Covid-19 will be as important as government measures, according to an analysis by UK academics.
Governments are unlikely to be able to keep containment measures – such as banning large events – in place for long enough to end outbreaks, according to the analysis, published in The Lancet.
Researchers at Oxford University, Imperial College in London, and Utrecht University in The Netherlands, say the virus is relatively slow spreading – risking a second "peak" after an outbreak appears to have been contained.
Researcher Professor Deirdre Hollingsworth said: "Completely preventing infection and mortality is not possible, so this is about mitigation. Our knowledge and understanding of COVID-19 will change over time, as will the response. High quality data collection and analysis will form an essential part of the control effort.
"Government communication strategies to keep the public informed will be absolutely vital."
He added: "Government needs to decide on the main objectives of mitigation-is it minimising morbidity and associated mortality, avoiding an epidemic peak that overwhelms health-care services, keeping the effects on the economy within manageable levels, and flattening the epidemic curve to wait for vaccine development and manufacture on scale and antiviral drug therapies.
"We point out they cannot achieve all of these – so choices must be made."
Professor Hans Heesterbeek, from Utrecht, said: "Social distancing measures are societally and economically disruptive and a balance has to be sought in how long they can be held in place. The models show that stopping measures after a few months could lead to a new peak later in the year. It would be good to investigate this further."
Meanwhile a report in Science claims that travel restrictions only "modestly" reduce the spread of the virus.
The analysis of measures introduced in China claims it merely delayed the spread of the disease outside Wuhan by three to five days. This especially applied to international transmission as a large number of people travelled from the region "without being detected."
The researchers, from the USA and Italy, state: “Moving forward we expect that travel restrictions to COVID-19 affected areas will have modest effects, and that transmission-reduction interventions will provide the greatest benefit to mitigate the epidemic."
How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic? Lancet 6 March 2020
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30567-5/fulltext
Science 8 March 2020
https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aba9757
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