During an interview with the BBC this week, Epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta reminded the audience that Wuhan Coronavirus is not a deadly disease for large swaths of the population and recommended allowing most people to get back to their lives. Further, she recommended mass testing be stopped and focused instead on vulnerable populations -- specifically on individuals who regularly interact with people who are high risk.
"It’s not deadly in a very large section of the population, so that presents us with this workable solution where by we can stop testing them, let them get on with their lives, let them go to school and receive something that incredibly valuable to them which is education and training. Let people keep jobs, let them feed their children. Let's preserve all of these things. Let the arts continue, or resume and flourish. We can do all this and by aggressively protecting, I think maybe shielding isn't the right word, aggressively protecting those who are are indeed vulnerable to this, which of course can be very deadly in a certain sector of the population," Dr. Gupta said. "The good news is we know now who is vulnerable to a very large degree. We know that."
"We know who is vulnerable and we know about the enormous costs of some of these measures," she continued. "We can balance these by using our tests to find creative solutions to protect the vulnerable. Not just shield them and shut them up and box them away but ways of protecting them by testing people who they'll be in contact with and making sure they won't pass the virus onto them by creating the conditions whereby they are at a low risk of contracting this virus which has not diminished in its potency but is currently now held at low risk, but we cannot hold it at low risk without paying these extreme costs."
“It’s not deadly in a very large section of the population, so that presents us with this workable solution.”
— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) September 17, 2020
Epidemiologist @SunetraGupta says if the UK is “aggressively protecting” the vulnerable then education, jobs and the arts can resume. #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/jA46dT1H3D
President Trump and members of the White House Wuhan coronavirus task force have offered similar solutions in the United States.