New strategies target hot spots
Governments hoping smaller-scale shutdowns can work this time
NEW YORK — After entire nations were shut down during the first surge of the coronavirus earlier this year, some countries and U.S. states are trying more targeted measures as cases rise again around the world, especially in Europe and the Americas.
New York’s new round of virus shutdowns zeroes in on individual neighbourhoods, closing schools and businesses in hot spots measuring just a couple of square miles. Spanish officials limited travel to and from some parts of Madrid before restrictions were widened throughout the capital and some suburbs. Italian authorities have sometimes quarantined spots as small as a single building.
While countries including Israel and the Czech Republic have reinstated nationwide closures, other governments hope smaller-scale shutdowns can work this time, in conjunction with testing, contact tracing and other initiatives they’ve now built up.
The concept of containing hot spots isn’t new, but it’s being tested under new pressures as authorities try to avoid a dreaded resurgence of illness and deaths, this time with economies weakened from earlier lockdowns, populations chafing at the idea of renewed restrictions and some communities complaining of unequal treatment.
Some scientists say a localized approach, if well-tailored and explained to the public, can be a nimble response at a complex point in the pandemic.
“It is pragmatic in appreciation of ‘restriction fatigue’ ... but it is strategic, allowing for mobilization of substantial resources to where they are needed most,” says Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, who is following New York City’s efforts closely and is on some city advisory boards. Other scientists are warier.
“If we’re serious about wiping out COVID in an area, we need co-ordinated responses across” as wide a swath as possible, says Benjamin Althouse, a research scientist with the Institute for Disease Modeling in Washington state.
In a study that has been posted online but not published in a journal or reviewed by independent experts, Althouse and other scientists found amid patchwork coronavirus-control measures in the U.S. this spring, some people travelled farther than usual for such activities as worship, suggesting they might have responded to closures by going to less-restricted areas.
Still, choosing between limited closures and widespread restrictions is “a very, very difficult decision,” Althouse notes.
Early in the outbreak, countries tried to quell hot spots from Wuhan, China — where a stringent lockdown was seen as key in squelching transmission — to Italy, where a decision to seal off 10 towns evolved within weeks into a nationwide lockdown. After the virus’s first surge, officials fought flare-ups with city-sized closures in recent months in places from Barcelona, Spain, to Melbourne, Australia.
With infection levels and deaths rising anew in Britain, scientists have advised officials to implement a national, twoweek lockdown. Instead, the government on Monday carved England into three tiers of coronavirus risk.
“The targeting of measures to specific groups or geographical areas is preferable to one-sizefits-all measures, because they allow us to minimize the damage that social distancing inevitably imposes on society and the economy,” said Flavio Toxvaerd, who specializes in economic epidemiology at the University of Cambridge.
Some researchers, however, say officials need to consider not just where people live, but where else they go. In New York City, people can escape restrictions entirely by taking the subway one or two stops.
“There’s room for improvement by taking into account some spillovers across neighbourhoods,” says John Birge, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business operations research professor.