Covid-19 crisis
Why contact tracing is a bad idea
When a person is infected and becomes symptomatic (i.e. has fever, cough or hs breathing difficulty), he (or she) is likely to be detected quite soon. He might feel sick and goes to see a doctor, or has a fever and is detected through temperature checking in the mall or other public places.
What then is the purpose of contact tracing?
Maybe it is to catch the people who may be infected by close contact with the infected person.
If we do not detect these infected people through contact tracing, there are two possible outcomes:
a) The infection becomes serious and they become symptomatic
b) The infection is mild and goes away.
We will soon catch the people who become symptomatic. They are likely to be the serious cases.
For the mild cases, the virus eventually disappear. They do not become a problem.
What then is the purpose of contact tracing?
I suspect that it is to catch the people that are infected and are asymptomatic. The fear is that they can spread the virus before they become symptomatic.
This is an overblown fear. My common sense tells me that the asymptomatic cases are mild and do not spread.
I checked the WHO website and found this report.
11 June 2020 - Global research on COVID-19 continues to be conducted, including how the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is transmitted. Current evidence suggests that most transmission occurs from symptomatic people through close contact with others. Accordingly, most recommendations by WHO on personal protective measures (such as use of masks and physical distancing) are based on controlling transmission from symptomatic patients, including patients with mild symptoms who are not easy to identify early on.
Available evidence from contact tracing reported by countries suggests that asymptomatically infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms. A subset of studies and data shared by some countries on detailed cluster investigations and contact tracing activities have reported that asymptomatically-infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms.
Comprehensive studies on transmission from asymptomatic patients are difficult to conduct, as they require testing of large population cohorts and more data are needed to better understand and quantified the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2. WHO is working with countries around the world, and global researchers, to gain better evidence-based understanding of the disease as a whole, including the role of asymptomatic patients in the transmission of the virus.
This report confirm my common sense.
We are wasting our time on contact tracing! Worse, by focusing on contact tracing, we are neglecting a more important strategy - to identify and treat the symptomatic cases.
We do not provide enough resources to deal with people who have symptoms and have a severe stage of the infection.
We need to set up special clinics to deal with the infected people. The covid test should be free for them. The special clinics should be easily accessible. If they have to be isolated at home or in an isolation center, they should be compensated for the loss of income.
Do you agree?
Tan Kin Lian
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