A Stanford University study identifies restaurants, gyms and hotels as risky and suggests targetted containment protocols
With the pandemic in its aggressive second phase, all countries are caught in a dilemma, forced to choose between the need to keep their gasping economies open through the winter months or save lives by going under lockdown yet again. So a new study that says that the reopening of restaurants, gyms and hotels carries the highest danger of spreading the virus is not something that the world even wants to deal with right now. But this is what researchers at Stanford University and Northwestern University, using mobile phone data from 98 million people, have discovered. They modelled the risks of infection at different locations between March and May in cities across the US to map the movement of people. The study looked at where they went, how long they stayed, how many others were present and then combined that information with data on the number of cases. That helped them map the virus spread and create infection models. These predicted that if restaurants in Chicago were reopened at full capacity, they would generate almost 6,00,000 new cases, three times as many as establishments in other categories. The researchers also found that about 10 per cent of the locations examined accounted for 85 per cent of predicted infections. Though Governments across the world have to deal with this unsavoury truth, there is a silver lining too. Given the fact that there is very little epidemiological data on how Corona protocols curb the spread of the virus, by collating this type of precise data, they can find vulnerable areas and take more localised preventive steps.
What the study has, in fact, shown is that hard lockdowns aren’t necessary to curb the infection. As the study showed, capping occupancy at 20 per cent in locations in the Chicago metro area cut down predicted new infections by more than 80 per cent. And because the occupancy caps primarily impacted visitors during peak hours, the restaurants only lost 42 per cent of patrons overall, as against losing all of their business during a lockdown. Other countries, too, can create their own virus dashboards and roll out targetted policies to tackle the contagion. They can harness technology, such as mobile phones and fitness trackers, to scout potential virus hotspots. But much will depend on how people continue to observe Corona-appropriate behaviour. As Health Minister Harsh Vardhan aptly said, consider the mask and other protocols as a vaccine till we get one. The faster we imbibe this, the faster can the whole world get back to work.