Time 23Mar2020

There comes a PoinT in
the unfolding of every epi-
demic when public-health
officials acknowledge that
despite their best efforts, an
invisible microbial foe has
managed to outwit them.
That time has come. As cases
of COVID-19 began to wane
in early March in China, there
was a surge in new infections
around the globe, from Iran to
Italy, South Korea to the U.S.
Deaths also rose—
the U.S. re corded its
first coronavirus-related
mortalities—and health offi-
cials warned that the disease
has “pandemic potential.”
There are now more than
80,000 cases of COVID-
infection in mainland China
and nearly 13,000 outside the
country, with the latter tally
growing daily.
When the Chinese govern-
ment took the unprecedented
steps of quarantining first the
city of Wuhan, where COVID-
19 emerged, and then 60 mil-
lion people living in the prov-
ince of Hubei, where Wuhan
is located, the hope was to
contain the virus. If the peo-
ple most likely to have been
exposed to and infected by
the virus couldn’t travel, then
they couldn’t spread the dis-
ease very far.
That was also President
Donald Trump’s public rea-
soning for the aggressive
travel restrictions the U.S.
government put in place in
January, denying entry to
many foreign nationals from
China, and funneling passen-
gers arriving in the U.S. who
might have traveled to China
through select airports where
they had their temperature
scanned and then, for those
with a fever, on to further
testing and monitoring.

78

Number of countries

and territories with

confirmed cases

of COVID-

92,

Number of documented

cases of the coronavirus

infection, globally

3,

Global count of deaths

due to COVID-19 infection

NUMBERS ARE AS OF MARCH 3, 2020,

AND COME FROM A DATA REPOSITORY

MANAGED BY THE JOHNS HOPKINS

UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR SYSTEMS

SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

The time for containment is over

By Alice Park

But if COVID-19 has

taught government and

public-health leaders any-

thing, it’s that containment,

in an era when viruses are

given wings through the ease

of international travel, is in-

creasingly only a short-term

strategy for combatting in-

fectious disease. And that’s

especially true when it comes

to the COVID-19 virus, which

appears to jump covertly

from person to person by

piggybacking in some hosts

without really making them

sick.

Detecting these people

is akin to capturing clouds,

and public-health officials

are now acknowledging that

the time for containment has

slipped through their fin-

gers. But that reality is prov-

ing more difficult for political

leaders to accept. At his first

press conference directly ad-

dressing the COVID-19 out-

break, Trump downplayed

its potential impact in the

U.S., declaring that a wide-

spread uptick is “not inevi-

table. The risk to the Ameri-

can people remains very low.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel

reassured the German pub-

lic on her website that “the

German health system is

well prepared.” Prime Min-

ister Shinzo Abe of Japan,

along with the International

Olympic Committee, main-

tains that the Summer Games

will continue as planned in

that country, but critics say

the Health Ministry has held

back on testing for the disease

out of fear that it would ex-

pose an alarming number of

infections.

Betting too heavily on

containment’s succeeding

almost certainly slowed

preparations for dealing

with the virus’ spread,

including scaling up testing

and medical-facility capacity

to accommodate a possible

surge in patients. “The cat

is out of the bag. COVID-

cannot be contained, and

we know this is going to be

a pandemic,” says Dr. Tom

Frieden, former director of

the U.S. Centers for Disease

Control and president and

CEO of Resolve to Save

Lives.

What’s making the

shift from containment to

control especially difficult is

COVID-19’s unknowns: its

contagiousness, incubation

period and deadliness. “It

could be like an average

flu year, or way worse, or

not as bad—we just don’t

know,” says Frieden. U.S.

health officials anticipate

that in order to minimize

transmission of the disease,

some communities will

need to adopt policies like

advising employees to work

from home and canceling

public gatherings.

That’s just a glimpse of

what might be coming not

just for Americans but for

people worldwide, warn

the residents of Wuhan.

“There are so many things

you can’t see with your

eyes, like the emotional

damage people suffer from,

especially the survivors who

have lost family members to

this outbreak,” says Togo, a

resident who anonymously

volunteers online to connect

COVID-19 patients with

treatment. “But this is only

on the outside. The way they

were hurt, the scars they

have, will never recover.”

— With reporting by charlie

camPbell/beiJing □