Thread by @vinuthewriter

Now that we know #Nizamuddin is a large cluster.. What next?

A look at How Singapore and South Korea handled such clusters, will help us.

1. Dont panic. No blame game. The Hindu, Muslim fight can wait.

1/n

2. Immediate action will be to find those who attended, trace, test, isolate and treat them.

Issue advertisements in all State papers/TV/radio and ask attendees to reach nearest hospital, ask the Tablighi Jamaat preachers for the phone numbers of all those attended. 2/n

Most of those who were present will not show symptoms now. In The singapore Safra Jurong dinner cluster which affected 47 ppl, many did not show symptoms for days after infection.

Listen:

So, isolate all of them and monitor even if asymptomatic. 3/n

You will mostly not find who was the first infected. Dont waste time searching for the source infection. Its pointless and waste of effort.

None of those at the dinner party showed symptoms or temprature spike before dinner. Yes, the club checked it. 4/n

straitstimes.com/singapore/heal…

Contact tracing. Talk to the patients. Who did they meet in Delhi, who did they meet in Flight/train, which train,which flight, which bay in train, who did they meet back at their home towns, their activity trail since they left Delhi. Make details public
news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-de…

Be transparent about each patient, Follow the South Korea example. Look how they have maintained the database. ncov.mohw.go.kr/bdBoardList_Re…
One row for each patient and sometimes patients will suddenly remember a contact. Make it easy for them to update you.

People in Andaman & Nicobar too have to access the history, they too have links with thr cluster. So please put it online.

Time is of essence. Spend only 2 hours per patient. Get accurate history within that.

nytimes.com/2020/03/17/wor…

Privacy may get affected here. In S Korea, they seized mobile phone, credit card etc. If you do it, Be careful with the data. Dont misuse it. Strip off personal information before sharing it online.

sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/c…

all this apart. Mass testing should start now. Right this minute you should start testing all those in the cluster, isolate and treat. You have to repeat it for all patients, all their contacts. Every second you waste, the untraced is giving it to another

aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/s…

Most of the infected will give it to their family members first. So their kith and kin needs to be tested too.

Finally, know that it will end. The faster you proceed, the more you will identify and isolate. But know that it will end soon. One cluster after another will emerge. But if our reaction is faster, it will soon end and we will be come S Korea

reuters.com/article/us-hea…

There will be more clusters. Call up media agencies, like ANI and PTI. They reported a series of religious gatherings and similar stuff around the lockdown time. See if anyone was symptomatic. Finding them is going to be a headache. But if lucky, u can stop a cluster.

Final tweet. Enough of this "stop panic mongering", "we are flattening curve", " lockdown works". It ends. HERE. Stop pressurising journalists. It's time to hit the panic button. Embrace it. Once a cluster is identified. Complacency has no room. Thread ends

Many are asking me what is the Singapore and South Korea clusters i'm talking about, @the_hindu did a full page on the subject. Details:

https://twitter.com/vinuthewriter/status/1243172412121706499?s=19&fbclid=IwAR3jYz_fMbsenjUtq_v1T9me-8suE3RwoSKyX-ldRz72NXtPNRnJ8LF1SJ4