National lockdowns to restrict the spread of the coronavirus infection are working, but they are a blunt tool that in the process is strangling economic activity and social life.
To craft a more tailored response to the disease though, policymakers will need a more sophisticated understanding of what they are up against. As yet, there are crucial gaps in scientific understanding of the virus and how it operates. Here are five questions that scientists are racing to answer:
1. Can you be reinfected?
For policymakers struggling with the economic cost of the lockdowns brought in to contain the coronavirus pandemic, the scenario of releasing people who have already had the virus back into something resembling normal life might seem appealing.
After all, the thinking goes, such individuals would be unable to infect others while at the same time enjoying immunity against reinfection — but would they really?
“You cant say just because someone has antibodies that they are immune,” David Cavanagh of the University of Edinburghs Institute of Immunology and Infection Research told POLITICO. “We just honestly have not enough idea of whether everyone will be immune after infection or not at the moment.”
There are reports from South Korea that people can become reinfected with the virus, so any governments thinking of issuing “immunity passports” to people who have had the disease will want their scientific experts to have a much better handle on the nature of the longer-term immune response first.
2. How is the virus transmitted?
It is clear that the coronavirus is spread through respiratory droplets, which is why people were from the start advised to cough and sneeze into their elbows to reduce the chance of infection.
Beyond that, however, things are less clear. Is it possible to become infected by touching a contaminated surface before touching ones mouth, nose or eyes? If so, how long can the virus be viable on different surfaces?
“It is not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces,” the World Health Organization (WHO) writes on its website. “Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days.”
When tracing and breaking up chains of infections, it makes a difference whether surfaces remain infectious for hours or several days, making this question important for assessing which safety precautions can slow the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, there remains disagreement as to whether wearing masks should be recommended or even made mandatory.
“Only wear a mask if you are ill with COVID-19 symptoms (especially coughing) or looking after someone who may have COVID-19,” the WHO suggests. However, some countries and cities have started making the wearing of masks mandatory in public places.
With experts shifting their advice and strong differences between countries policies, whether masks help against transmission remains unclear.
3. Does the virus care about the weather?
“A lot of people think [the virus] goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in February, suggesting warmer temperatures could make it easier to battle the pandemic.
With the virus still spreading vigorously around the world, the presidents optimism now looks misplaced.
“Given that countries currently in summer climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed,” scientists of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine wrote in a report earlier this month.
Yet the scientists also pointed out that it is too early to draw meaningful conclusions from sufficiently large data sets, given the virus was first reported in December last year.
The idea of decreasing infections with improving weather is closely linked to the idea that COVID-19 resembles the common flu, a view many scientists and politicians held in the early days of the outbreak.
But things have changed.
Belgian Health Minister Maggie De Block is now being sued by doctors over her earlier assertion that the virus merely causes a “little flu.”
4. Who does it kill?
The virus is more deadly in older people and those with underlying health conditions, but exactly why is still poorly understood.
On this topic, the WHO writes: “While we are still learning about how COVID-2019 affects people, older persons and persons with pre-existing medical conditions (such as high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, cancer or diabetes) appear to develop serious illness more often than others.”
Germany, for example, has so far recorded
National lockdowns to restrict the spread of the coronavirus infection are working, but they are a blunt tool that in the process is strangling economic activity and social life.
To craft a more tailored response to the disease though, policymakers will need a more sophisticated understanding of what they are up against. As yet, there are crucial gaps in scientific understanding of the virus and how it operates. Here are five questions that scientists are racing to answer:
1. Can you be reinfected?
For policymakers struggling with the economic cost of the lockdowns brought in to contain the coronavirus pandemic, the scenario of releasing people who have already had the virus back into something resembling normal life might seem appealing.
After all, the thinking goes, such individuals would be unable to infect others while at the same time enjoying immunity against reinfection — but would they really?
“You cant say just because someone has antibodies that they are immune,” David Cavanagh of the University of Edinburghs Institute of Immunology and Infection Research told POLITICO. “We just honestly have not enough idea of whether everyone will be immune after infection or not at the moment.”
There are reports from South Korea that people can become reinfected with the virus, so any governments thinking of issuing “immunity passports” to people who have had the disease will want their scientific experts to have a much better handle on the nature of the longer-term immune response first.
2. How is the virus transmitted?
It is clear that the coronavirus is spread through respiratory droplets, which is why people were from the start advised to cough and sneeze into their elbows to reduce the chance of infection.
Beyond that, however, things are less clear. Is it possible to become infected by touching a contaminated surface before touching ones mouth, nose or eyes? If so, how long can the virus be viable on different surfaces?
“It is not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces,” the World Health Organization (WHO) writes on its website. “Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days.”
When tracing and breaking up chains of infections, it makes a difference whether surfaces remain infectious for hours or several days, making this question important for assessing which safety precautions can slow the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, there remains disagreement as to whether wearing masks should be recommended or even made mandatory.
“Only wear a mask if you are ill with COVID-19 symptoms (especially coughing) or looking after someone who may have COVID-19,” the WHO suggests. However, some countries and cities have started making the wearing of masks mandatory in public places.
With experts shifting their advice and strong differences between countries policies, whether masks help against transmission remains unclear.
3. Does the virus care about the weather?
“A lot of people think [the virus] goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in February, suggesting warmer temperatures could make it easier to battle the pandemic.
With the virus still spreading vigorously around the world, the presidents optimism now looks misplaced.
“Given that countries currently in summer climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed,” scientists of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine wrote in a report earlier this month.
Yet the scientists also pointed out that it is too early to draw meaningful conclusions from sufficiently large data sets, given the virus was first reported in December last year.
The idea of decreasing infections with improving weather is closely linked to the idea that COVID-19 resembles the common flu, a view many scientists and politicians held in the early days of the outbreak.
But things have changed.
Belgian Health Minister Maggie De Block is now being sued by doctors over her earlier assertion that the virus merely causes a “little flu.”
4. Who does it kill?
The virus is more deadly in older people and those with underlying health conditions, but exactly why is still poorly understood.
On this topic, the WHO writes: “While we are still learning about how COVID-2019 affects people, older persons and persons with pre-existing medical conditions (such as high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, cancer or diabetes) appear to develop serious illness more often than others.”
Germany, for example, has so far recorded
