3 ms·
I find the Korean call center paper pretty interesting [1]. In early March, this building had 97 infections: 89 on one half of one floor, 5 on the other half of
by kens 6y ago
I find the Korean call center paper pretty interesting [1]. In early March, this building had 97 infections: 89 on one half of one floor, 5 on the other half of the floor, and 3 on other floors. The two halves of the floor were separated by doors but shared the elevators, bathrooms, etc. It seems clear from this that almost all of the infections were from being in a shared space with someone infected. (There's a nice diagram of the infections [2].)
The other thing I got from the article is that South Korea is on a whole different level of testing than the US. When infection was detected, they tested everyone who was in the building or had visited: 1143 people tested with results in 12-24 hours. Everyone positive was isolated and everyone negative was quarantined and re-tested for 14 days. They also texted 16,628 people who had been near the building for more than 5 minutes (from cell data), telling them to avoid contact with others and get tested. This level of testing and tracing got South Korea (51 million people) to the point that it is now averaging just 10 new cases per day.
[1] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274_article
[2] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274-f2 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274-f2
- leereeves 6y ago> South Korea is on a whole different level of testing than the US According to [1] and [2], the US has performed twice as many tests per capita as South Korea. Roughly: The US has performed 8.9 million tests for a population of 330 million (27 tests per thousand people). South Korea has performed 660 thousand tests for a population of 50 million (13 tests per thousand people). 1: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/ https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/ 2: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#how-many-total-tests-have-been-performed https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#how-many-tota...
- krn 6y ago> According to [1] and [2], the US has performed twice as many tests per capita as South Korea. That's probably because South Korea managed to quickly contain the spread by starting large-scale testing much much earlier. And its number of new daily cases of COVID-19 reached the peak on February 29.
- FalconSensei 6y agomaybe the difference is who they are testing. I mean, US started testing later, and is not doing testing based on who came in contact with positives. So, people continue to spread until they get sick, IF they get symptomatic.
- leereeves 6y agoOr government response isn't the reason for the difference. Japan's government didn't respond quickly to COVID-19 (some have even said they actively tried to downplay it to protect the Olympics) and yet Japan has very few cases. Perhaps the difference is cultural, or geographic, or travel patterns, or something else entirely.