Adopt the WHO 6 Conditions for lifting the Lockdown

The advice of the World Health Organisation (WHO) states that a lockdown should only be lifted if the following Six WHO Conditions are met:

1. Disease transmission is under control.
2. Health systems can “detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact”.
3. Hot spot risks are minimized in vulnerable places, such as care homes.
4. Schools, workplaces, and other essential places have established preventive measures.
5. The risk of importing new cases “can be managed”.
6. Communities are fully educated, engaged, and empowered to live under a new normal.

Countries that followed the advice of the WHO, including South Korea, China and New Zealand have managed to contain the virus and reduce daily cases to single figures.

Countries that followed the advice of the WHO, including South Korea, China and New Zealand have managed to contain the virus and reduce daily cases to single figures.

Worldwide, there has been two different strategies:

1. The strategy pursued in many countries in the East/Pacific (i.e. South Korea, China, and New Zealand) which is to eradicate the virus; and
2. The strategy pursued in many states in the West (i.e. Italy, France, Spain, the UK including Scotland) which is to suppress the virus which will mean, as the Document explains, ‘we will need to learn to live with this virus, possibly for some time to come.’

The SG Document assumes that before the virus can be eradicated, there needs to be a vaccine, but this has never been the case when it comes to viruses. There is still no vaccine for SARS, but we do not talk about ‘living with SARS’. Covid-19 cannot survive for long outside a host, so if transmission is prevented the virus will die out. South Korea and China show that the number of domestic transitions can be eliminated to almost nil with most new cases coming from outside the countries.

A contact tracing, testing and isolation strategy should be implemented in Orkney, as well as for the rest of Scotland, immediately. Orkney has relevant facilities, staff and, it is assumed, relatively low numbers of cases and, with national support, could do this effectively.

The impact on loss of life of these two different strategies is stark and illustrated by the following figures for the number of deaths per million in the following countries as of 30 April 2020:

UK - 392
USA - 186
Germany - 78
France - 360

Compared with:

New Zealand - 4
South Korea - 5
China - 3

Statistics from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

There can be problems with statistics, particularly in ensuring that all deaths caused by Covid-19 are captured, with China recently revising the figures significantly upwards to capture deaths that were probably caused by Covid-19. However, the pattern is clear: New Zealand, South Korea and China hardly register when compared to most Western countries. The figure for the UK is taken from the officially released figures (26,097 as of 30 April 2020) so this is an understatement of what the true figure for Covid-19 related deaths is.