COVID-19 suppression ‘only viable strategy at the current time’

• Research suggests that the best strategy for minimizing the toll of the new coronavirus involves widespread and extended social distancing.

Research from the Imperial College London (ICL), in the United Kingdom, has predicted the likely effects on mortality of two different ways of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings, which are directly informing U.K. policy, suggest that in the U.K. and United States, a policy of suppressing the outbreak, rather than mitigating it, would significantly reduce demand for critical care beds and the number of people who would die.

Prof. Neil Ferguson, Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics, at ICL, is the first and corresponding author of the new study.