Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community

Re:Open letter from Italy to the international scientific co... by wnkrshm on Saturday March 14, 2020 @08:32PM (#22579946)

What do you think of the practice of only testing people who need hospital-level care and people who had contact with confirmed covid-19 patients (and people who traveled to at risk regions)?

I would think that this can only give you the infected from a few clusters and you can be surprised by an unknown cluster of patients suddenly needing intensive care.

Edit: And due to the long incubation period, that cluster can be quite large.

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Re:Open letter from Italy to the international scientific co... by marcosdumay on Saturday March 14, 2020 @10:11PM (#22580598)

Testing the entire population is not viable. If you don't have many in-country cases, you can delay the epidemics arrival by controlling just the people that come from elsewhere.

Of course, after the disease starts propagating internally, testing becomes irrelevant, and it's time to reduce its spreading speed.

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