editorial letter about lockdown
Answers
The Covid-19 lockdown is now in its third week yet the government remains silent on how it will end. While the current emergency makes some home truths unhelpful, explaining where we are going with this lockdown is not one of them.
If as a country we are unable to control Covid-19 by other means, the lockdown must continue.
The longer and tighter the lockdown, the less Covid-19 infection will remain to be transmitted to the uninfected population. But how can Covid-19 be controlled after lockdown ends?
We can hope for some vaccine to come to the rescue but not for many many months.
We could pray that the present levels of infection put us close to gaining ‘herd immunity’ which would allow us to end lockdown, but all the data says we are nowhere near ‘herd immunity’.
Or we must wait in lockdown for the Covid-19 infection to reduce to a level we can control through increased testing & tracking and so hopefully reduce the infection rate to insignificance.
The important number to watch is the percentage of people tested for Covid-19 who are found positive, a percentage today running at 40 percent. This is far too high to end lockdown, not even adequate to properly allow the essential testing of NHS & social workers.
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