1/ We don't hear much of Europe's CDC @ECDC_EU but it has been a major force in shaping the pandemic response. I talked to its top expert Sergio Brusin for his predictions and reflections - you may be surprised by a lot of it...
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
2/ Brits will remember Mr Brusin for warning, on March 8, that the UK was following Italy's trajectory and needed to lock down within days. The PM ignored him but he was right then and so it's worth listening to him now...
3/ Mr Brusin is now more upbeat. "The ICUs are not clogged and our health services now have much better planning and response times. So, I am optimistic we will not see the big horrible scenes we saw in March and April, but we will see a lot more cases," he says.
4/ He also thinks more national lockdowns are unlikely, despite what he expects to be a prolonged resurgence in cases. “I don't see the need for moving back to a full suppression strategy.... As long as hospitals can cope there is no need for such drastic measures.”
5/ He's also v good on what is pushing numbers up now: “What is really driving the resurgence is the fact that we have still quite a few gatherings of people.... it comes mostly from weddings, bars and discos; places were quite a lot of people are mixing together...
6/ “A lot of the new cases are among young people. This is good because they are less vulnerable but they will pass it up to older groups because that is how transmission works. For this reason, there a particular need to protect the vulnerable”.
7/ Mr Brusin won't name names but says the countries that did best planned for "Disease X' rather than the flu. This meant they had suppression and not just mitigation plans at the ready. "The countries that implemented tough measures early were the ones that had better plans”.
8/ He also thinks we got "lucky" with #COVID19 “In a way, we were lucky that this Covid pandemic was not really a black swan event. It was a white swan in terms of deaths. Certainly, it is nothing like the 1918 Spanish Flu or smallpox and cholera in the 1800s".
9/ Full interview here: telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
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