COVID-19: When to Allow Businesses to Reopen?
When can we start relaxing social distancing rules and allow businesses to reopen? Consider three factors. The first is the infection. How prevalent is the infection in the community? Is it trending upwards or downwards? Have we looked at potential hot spots (eg, nursing homes, homeless shelters, subways)? How about vulnerable populations? The second is preparedness. Do we have sufficient testing, personal protective equipment (PPE), and contact tracing resources to identify and isolate COVID+ patients? Have we put in place sufficient safeguards to ensure patient privacy while deploying contact tracing https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/04/20/privacy-covid-19-data-collection/? How can we monitor and support those who need to be isolated? Do we have sufficient healthcare facilities & providers, ICUs, and ventilators? And the third is the economy. There is an urgent need to restart businesses. Employees need to pay their bills and feed their families.
We have ways to measure preparedness and the economy. However, measuring prevalence has been challenging. Part of the issue is that it is impractical to test everyone, and representative sampling is difficult. Given these challenges, many experts are now relying on a surrogate measure, test-positivity rate, to determine if the infection is under control. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/. This is the number of positive infections divided by the total number of tests performed.
Today, the test-positivity rate for COVID-19 in the U.S. is 20%. The WHO recommends levels less than 10%. Since test kits have been limited and reserved predominantly for the symptomatic and sicker patients, these numbers are high. However, as we look to expand testing to include mildly symptomatic as well as asymptomatic individuals, we should expect to see that increased testing, accompanied by contact tracing and isolation for COVID+ patients, will lower the test-positivity rate considerably. Researchers recommend at least 152 tests per 100,000 persons per day https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/17/us/coronavirus-testing-states.html?referringSource=articleShare. Today, the U.S. tests on average 45 per 100,000 persons per day. Several experts believe that it will not be until the Fall time frame before we can achieve adequate testing volume https://twitter.com/TODAYshow/status/1252196196254433281, which from an economic standpoint may be untenable.
So what does this mean for States that plan to bring back businesses before then, even while testing ramps up? It means that individuals, businesses, healthcare providers, and public health agencies will need to be hyper-vigilant and hyper-responsive. Potential cases will need to be identified and isolated early; and exposures will need to be tested and isolated quickly. It also means that social distancing, handwashing & disinfecting, and use of masks will need to continue for some time.
Enterprise Agile Transformation Lead @ Honeywell | Digital Engineering
4yReopen sooner than later. https://youtu.be/xfLVxx_lBLU
Global Strategy, Business Development, and Marketing Leader | Mobile Technology Solutions Specialist | Executive Advisor
4yThanks for continuing to put this important discussion front and center with accurate data and resources.
Machine Learning Executive | Generative AI-Enabled Enterprise Application Development | Digital Health/Therapeutics
4yHow do we, technology providers, see the post COVID-19 world? What does it look like? When do we stop talking about innovation and innovate? We wake up each and every morning, not knowing if all is well. When was the last time we felt this way? In our life time? Probably, never. Let's get to work to prevent, not to analyze.
Keynote Speaker and Video Meeting Advisor, helping executives be more persuasive and influential in their video meetings and online presentations.
4yThe three factors are indeed key, but it's important to keep in mind that the trade-offs may not be linear. For example, being too slow to reopen will clearly hurt the economy. But it is possible (likely) that reopening too soon could hurt the economy even more. Unfortunately, we are navigating blind without sufficient data, so the risk/reward calculations are that much more difficult to make.
20 Years Microsoft | VP Growth and Client Experience | Driving Revenue Growth to Achieve Exit/New Funding Round
4yCan we simply mitigate community spread, take individual responsibility, at it’s basic root level: all properly wear masks and physically distance whenever outside the home giving science a change to deliver the silver bullet: a vaccine?