Making decisions to mitigate COVID-19 with limited knowledge
Weituo Zhang
Bi-yun Qian
Published:April 07, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30280-2
On March 11, 2020, WHO declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. Aggressive actions should be taken immediately to mitigate the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. In their Comment, Yonghong Xiao and Mili Estee Torok1 rightly stated that infection prevention and control measures should be based on sound scientific principles. However, we disagree with the authors' views on certain measures that they consider to have “no scientific basis and have proven to be ineffective”. A difference exists between measures with unknown effectiveness and those that have been proven ineffective or of no value.
We disagree with Xiao and Torok's view that “the practice of blocking traffic and lockdown of villages is of no value for the prevention and control of COVID-19”. One of the references provided to support this statement was a local transport authority policy reported in a newspaper, which should not be considered as scientific evidence. Several studies have been done to assess the effectiveness of travel restrictions,2, 3 and the benefit of such restrictions might vary in different settings. Further studies and more data are required to reach a solid conclusion.
