Coronavirus: How to Do Testing and Contact Tracing

Part 3 of Coronavirus: Learning How to Dance

Testing

Countries circled in green controlled the epidemic and had lots of testing. Countries in red failed at both. There are only two types of outliers here. On one side, circled in blue, there’s Iceland, with lots of testing but also lots of infections. It’s a very unique country: a remote island with lots of specificities, including random testing in the population. The other group is circled in grey. These countries don’t have much testing, but also few infections per capita. There can be many reasons for that, from having a huge population to benefiting from a delay in the epidemic, applying the hammer early, being on track for an outbreak…
Very few countries are displayed because very few countries have enough clear data on daily number of people tested. Some countries don’t have daily numbers, for others it’s unclear what the testing unit is. Is it people? Test kits? How many test kits are there per country? Taiwan’s numbers refer to test kits, but we don’t know how many test kits there are per person. However, the red line is low enough compared to the green line that even 2 tests per person would still keep the red line below the green line. Especially if they’re using clever testing tactics that can increase efficiency.

Testing and contact tracing are the intelligence; isolation and quarantines are the action.

Contact Tracing

Nurses from the Anchorage Health Department and Anchorage School District work on the COVID-19 contact investigations and monitoring team on Thursday, April 16, 2020 in a conference room at the health department in downtown Anchorage. Photo: Loren Holmes / ADN, via Anchorage Daily News
Anchorage School District nurse Bethany Zimpelman works on the COVID-19 contact investigations and monitoring team on Thursday, April 16, 2020. The team is made up of nurses from the municipality as well as from the Anchorage School District. (Loren Holmes / ADN) Anchorage Daily News

The Privacy of Contact Tracing

Source. Thank you Donald G McNeil Jr for the inspiration

What It Would Take for Bluetooth Apps to Be Useful for Contact Tracing

A passenger scans a QR code to get his green pass at a subway station in Wuhan on April 01, 2020. Ng Han Guan/AP Photo, via Business Insider
Source. Note: The source includes a version of this chart with blue-red gradients with color-blind people.

How Should We Think about Coronavirus and Privacy?

Source: New York Times

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2 MSc in Engineering. Stanford MBA. Ex-Consultant. Creator of applications with >20M users. Currently leading a billion-dollar business @ Course Hero

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Tomas Pueyo

2 MSc in Engineering. Stanford MBA. Ex-Consultant. Creator of applications with >20M users. Currently leading a billion-dollar business @ Course Hero