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Testing by itself does nothing to reduce transmission. What it does do, though, is give you the opportunity to identify infected people and isolate them. And if
by smacktoward 6y ago
Testing by itself does nothing to reduce transmission. What it does do, though, is give you the opportunity to identify infected people and isolate them. And if you can identify and isolate them early enough in the course of their illness, you can prevent them from infecting many other people, and that’s what reduces transmission.
Given that it appears people with COVID-19 can shed the disease for many days before showing any symptoms, if your goal is to pinch off outbreaks before they become outbreaks, frequent, universal testing is the only way to get there.
- ahupp 6y agoRight, but I haven't seen anything to suggest our current testing plans will be universal or frequent enough to really solve this. So testing more is certainly better than not testing, but without constant testing of non-sick people it's not really going to help much. "Quantity has a quality all it's own"
- tinus_hn 6y agoThe article specifically is about a solution which would enable enormous amounts of people for cheap, so you can do universal tests.