Thread by @barrysmyth

This seems like an interesting experiment. Slovakia is testing entire population (5m) over 2 w/ends. Testing is ‘voluntary’ but those not participating must self-isolate for 10d. The first round covered 1m people with 1% positivity.
(1/n) @dwnews

In theory, absent issues with false negatives, could an approach like this drive the virus out of a country within a couple of weeks after testing? Imperfect because of false negatives and secondary tx during isolation, but it would surely do more than 6 was in L5 (for all) (2/n)

Eg, assume 1% positive rate from round 1 is correct, then Slovakia will end up with 50k people in isolation for 10-14days after a full testing cycle. After that cases will be the false negatives & secondary tx during isolation. (3/n)

So then a second cycle of targeted testing for family members/careers of the positives from the first cycle, should capture most of secondary tx. Plus a random sampling of negatives from cycle 1 to see how much secondary tx came from the false negs. (4/n)

The end result could be a near elimination of cases in about 4-6 weeks with less than 6m (!) tests. But no lockdown or severe restrictions throughout for 99% of the population who are testing negative. (5/n)

Could this work for Ireland? We test ~100k/week so a big stretch to get to 2.5m/week let alone 5m/week. There will be false positives too but still a small fraction of entire population & a better alternative (and outcome?) than L5? Is there anyway to make it work?