In my ideal world, we would increase testing capacity enough to 1. test all people who come to hospitals with COVID symptoms (fever OR respiratory symptoms), throughout #lka. With further expansion 2. We would ask people in the community with symptoms to come and get tested. 1/4
It's "targeted" to find clusters earlier, rather than when there are 1000s of people and we stumble upon it from the current surveillance testing that is done (it appears this cluster was (thankfully) detected by such surveillance testing). 2/4
The point is, it potentially could have picked up much earlier if we had expanded testing, as there are reports that people related to the cluster were having symptoms even in late September. Early detection limits spread and hence limits the size of the cluster. 3/4
This is not advocating for "random" testing (without resource limitations, or with the capacity to do pooled testing, this is something to consider). Rather, it is expanding the net to test symptomatic people, to find clusters before they become huge. 4/4
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We all know about face masks, hand washing and distancing. I want to highlight high risk situations, so you can think twice when you face situations in the coming weeks.
Better yet if you read this article, but I will summarise in a few tweets
1. Closed rooms with recirculating air (e.g. airconditioned, or no windows) are higher risk than larger rooms with free air flow, because virus aerosols accumulate and float around, and you're more likely to come into contact with it in higher doses. elpais.com/infografias/20…
2. The longer you spend time with a COVID+ person, the more risk you are at. This could be in one go, or over multiple shorter contacts during the day. Rule of thumb is 15 minutes over 24 hours is a significant contact.