Aggressive containment, suppression, and mitigation of covid-19: lessons learnt from eight countries

Shishi Wu; Rachel Neill; Chuan De Foo; Alvin Qijia Chua; Anne-Sophie Jung; Victoria Haldane; Salma M Abdalla; Wei-Jie Guan; Sudhvir Singh; Anders Nordström; Helena Legido-Quigley

doi:10.1136/bmj-2021-067508

Aggressive containment, suppression, and mitigation of covid-19: lessons learnt from eight countries

BMJ. 2021 Nov 28:375:e067508. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2021-067508.

Authors

Shishi Wu¹, Rachel Neill², Chuan De Foo³, Alvin Qijia Chua³, Anne-Sophie Jung⁴, Victoria Haldane⁵, Salma M Abdalla^{6

7}, Wei-Jie Guan^{8

9}, Sudhvir Singh^{6

10}, Anders Nordström⁶, Helena Legido-Quigley^{3

4

6}

Affiliations

¹ Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Canada shishi.wu@utoronto.ca.
² Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA.
³ Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
⁴ Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
⁵ Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Canada.
⁶ Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Secretariat.
⁷ School of Public Health, Boston University, USA.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou Medical University, China.
⁹ Department of Thoracic Surgery, Guangzhou Institute for Respiratory Health, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China.
¹⁰ Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Abstract

Shishi Wu and colleagues examine three distinct response strategies for covid-19 in eight countries and argue that aggressive containment is the optimal approach to limiting loss of lives and livelihoods and achievable in the absence of vaccines and effective therapies

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19 / prevention & control*
COVID-19 / transmission
Communicable Disease Control / methods*
Contact Tracing / methods
Humans
Hygiene
Masks
Pandemics
Physical Distancing
Public Health
Quarantine / methods
SARS-CoV-2
Travel