3 ms·
Why not randomly test city populations to learn asymptomatic Covid rates?
It seems simple enough to test a few thousand healthy random residents of San Fransisco, Seattle, and New York to get a rough idea of the level of asymptomatic community Covid in the area. Why haven't random community Covid tests been carried out yet?
- tastroder 7y agoMainly because that insight would be relatively irrelevant and can be extrapolated on tests that actually make sense I would guess. There's a shortage in test capacity right now, especially in those areas that are most affected. Why would one go out of their way to waste thousands on random people?
- Someone 7y agoThe reason for doing this is to better estimate the essential parameters of the disease (ease of spreading, distribution of symptoms, lethality rate) We need those for capacity planning and for deciding when and how to ease restrictions. I think many of the richer countries already have decent enough estimates for capacity planning, and are in the process of widening testing to gather ideas about how to wind down restrictions (may take till the end of 2021, in some scenarios)
- tastroder 7y agoThat seems beside the point OP was trying to make. They were suggesting random sampled tests in current hotspot areas where there's already a shortage in available tests. I'm not sure what benefit random sampling would give you over testing actual potential disease candidates through sensible contact tracing in these areas. That might get you data slightly biased towards a sensible worst case and you're free to use data from other areas for capacity planning to compensate until they ramp up test availability.
- troydavis 7y agoIt’s happening in at least one location and maybe others. This is the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, from King County Public Health and Seattle Flu Study: https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/03/23/introducing-scan-the-greater-seattle-coronavirus-assessment-network/ https://publichealthinsider.com/2020/03/23/introducing-scan-...