Testing, Tracking and Isolating

As long as we do not have a vaccine or a medical remedy for the virus, the whole or part of the population will be exposed to the risk in getting infected, once we start going back to semi new normal. The lockdown strategy is a temporary measure and should not be prolonged any further, as the cure will have worse effect than the virus and symptoms. The current lockdown has serious impact on the wellbeing of the population, the economy of the country as a whole and will slow down the recovery time. Achieving near 100% protection from the virus is not going to happen until a vaccine will be put in place and this is not going to happen overnight or even next month. Lockdown status is not sustainable for the long term. As an alternative we should consider the approach and the strategy South Korea applied right from the start successfully, namely testing, tracking, and isolation. Therefore the plan should be put in a place similar approach otherwise we are in for long term Lockdown, daily firefighting, which will have devastating impact on the society. Safety measures should be put in place in order to overcome and minimize the risk and go on with normal life without serious impacting the population. The lockdown is a preventative measure but effecting negatively on our daily life and have serious impact on the population

Why the contribution is important

We should consider a long term solution until vaccine is available. Lockdown is not the solution. It is just slowing downing the infection process and it works but not practical to our daily life in the long term and it is not the norm!!

by PRIMAS on May 05, 2020 at 07:32PM

Current Rating

Average rating: 4.7
Based on: 29 votes

Comments

  • Posted by Nina1000 May 05, 2020 at 23:52

    Fully supportive of this. Lockdown was a useful short term strategy to minimise the spread and the potential impact on our NHS. It is not a viable long term solution and will become more difficult to police over time as more people find it difficult to isolate for prolonged periods of time. It also unnecessarily risks individuals safety, education and general well being, potentially storing up longer term issues for a much wider set of the population. It was useful whilst we better prepared ourselves to control the virus. We must now move to a test and trace strategy, supported by social distancing and hygiene standards in public spaces and self isolation where exposed or tested positive. We have been aware of this virus since December last year and yet are unable to test and trace to the levels we need to. Meanwhile we are happy to continue impacting our economy and putting the well being of our people and education of our child at risk.

  • Posted by Jab64000 May 06, 2020 at 04:55

    Let’s use a trusted app on phones instead of the jobs for the boys one created by vote leave with ties to Cambridge analytica

  • Posted by JensenSL May 06, 2020 at 08:35

    In terms of credibility for the tracking app, it would be best if Scotland used a different app than that developed by England. The sheer number of security experts advising against use of the England app should be sufficient warning, the conflict-of-interest links of the contractors to the Westminster government are definitely strong indicators as well.

  • Posted by Lola700 May 06, 2020 at 22:23

    There will be no way out of this lockdown without massive increase in testing. I don't understand how testing numbers are still so low.

  • Posted by Fredsquine May 07, 2020 at 11:24

    Scotland needs to adopt an independent approach to dealing with the virus to that of England and to focus on increased and structured testing. Certainly collaborating with England is necessary but we do not need to be slavishly following Westminster. Development of our own testing, tracking and isolation strategy is a must. The development of a phone app for individual use is OK but could be subject to errors or abuse in reporting.
    We also need to consider using existing testing centers, especially the mobile ones that are currently not being used for breast screening, blood donation etc. and get those set up around the country (possibly partially manned by military personnel?) with a structured planned appointment system to increase testing availability. The units could be set up to include the necessary laboratory equipment to process the tests as well - PCR machines and blood test equipment isn't huge - so avoiding the need to send tests to labs for processing as long as there was good record keeping.
     

  • Posted by AndrewRichmond May 07, 2020 at 14:33

    Totally endorse the Test, Trace, Isolate and Support strategy. Brilliant see support added as this is critical. I would strongly encourage the recruitment of contact tracers urgently to ensure this initiative can be rolled out effectively and quickly.

  • Posted by Strathearn May 07, 2020 at 18:01

    I also endorse the Test, Trace, Isolate and Support strategy and think the Support part is an important element of the whole approach – good to see ScotGov are thinking about this.

    However, I understand that we are short of the testing capacity that would currently be needed to test all potential cases and their contacts, so we need to reduce the number of cases before this is viable. There is also a need to recruit and train contact tracers, which requires some time.

    As for apps, they can only be part of the solution. I would favour the Google/Apple approach rather than the UK product, which appears to breach confidentiality and data protection rules. I think many people in Scotland would be too canny to download an app developed by Cummings' pals so it would likely fail on a numbers basis. It also seems it may fail on a functional basis anyway and so will need to be thrown away as another expensive disaster (that has syphoned more tax payers' money into the pockets of rich and unaccountable capitalists).

  • Posted by Dwilliams21 May 08, 2020 at 11:39

    The turn round of results needs to be accelerated for TTIS to be effective.

    I fear the reluctance to reduce the restrictions and the understandable concern about the impact on R and a return to exponential growth reflects a lack of infrastructure to support TTIS or confidence in that infrastructure

  • Posted by Annieo53 May 08, 2020 at 21:04

    I fully support the TTIS strategy. This must now be a priority and all the resources required should be provided as a matter of urgency, to take forward the strategy effectively. It must also be able to respond to localised developments quickly so that we have more geographical information about levels of infection and risk.

    An app for Scotland, developed responsibly to gather only relevant information, could also provide a wealth of geographical/localised information.

    Without TTIS and with only the current information about rates and location of infection, it is very difficult to assess personal/family risk and to feel confident in 'easing' of lockdown.

     

  • Posted by Joc May 10, 2020 at 15:51

    I understand that the UK government might outsource tracing to an organization like SERCO. This would be crazy as we already have many professionals in health and local government already trained in tracing. These include Environmental Health, Environment Protection, community nurses, occupational health, and anyone who has been trained to trace after outbreaks such as HIV, food poisoning, chemical disasters, Ebola and many other occasions when tracing is required. Local government is well able to get up to speed quickly with teams of trained professionals then it would just be any shortfall of people who would need trained from scratch.

  • Posted by mina412 May 10, 2020 at 19:38

    Test, trace, isolate and support can only work if people co-operate. Would it be possible to set up a control centre (like the emergency services have)? It would be a centre totally dedicated to Covid-19. There would be a phone line/lines to report cases or symptoms. They would give you details about where to go or what to do pertaining to your own area. It would come under the NHS umbrella but be for Covid-19 issues and enquiries only. As a suggestion you could split it into Highlands and Islands, Central etc so that each area would have a better idea of the position it's in regarding the virus. Each centre would keep it's own statistics but report to the central government body to obtain a national picture of where the country is.
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