Elimination Is The Only Strategy For COVID-19

It works. We have real-world examples. It just takes will

Medical workers in Wuhan in February. They’re eating hot-pot and having parades now.

We know how to beat COVID-19. We don’t need hypothetical arguments when we have the real world. China and almost all of its neighbors (Taiwan, Vietnam, Mongolia, etc) have beat this disease. New Zealand has beat it. It can be done.

Elimination is the only destination. Not living with the disease. Beating it down to zero, and getting back to living with each other. My country, Sri Lanka, has done this before. I am trying to tell us, we can do it again.

The Elimination Strategy

As epidemiologist Devi Sridhar keeps saying, over and over:

Three paths for governments: 
1. ‘simmer’ virus & be stuck in lockdown/release cycles
2. do nothing & let it rip or 
3. aim for *elimination* with strong test/trace/isolation, good guidance to public & border measures. 
Two of the above paths lead to large economic costs; one less so.

Elimination, elimination, elimination. What does elimination mean? Getting local cases down to zero. Do they stay at zero? No, the bugger gets back in. What do you do then? Eliminate it again. Vietnam has showed us this in Da Nang. Australia with its 111 day lockdown…