Finally, Corona Surveys

The news that we were waiting to hear: finally, in Israel, we will begin to better understand the full extent of this crisis. In an interview in the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom (translated from Hebrew), Prof. Itamar Grotto, Associate Director General of the Ministry of Health, announced that "in the next few days about half a million blood tests will be available to identify the corona virus. The tests are intended to serve as a survey of the corona's prevalence in the population, and will not be used to isolate or provide treatment. These are serological tests that identify two types of antibodies, and can also be detected in a person without symptoms if they are infected now or in the past. The tests will probably come into use as early as next week".

As pointed out in my previous post, this is so very important to feed into the government decision-making: until now we have only been testing the "sick" people and implementing nation-wide measures based upon mere assumptions regarding the prevalence of infecting agents among the rest of the population.

The survey will enable us to know, among other things:

• Where are clusters of the "invisible carriers" are and focus our efforts on their isolation?
• Are two weeks without symptoms sufficient to determine that an individual has not been infected?
• What actually is the minimal set of symptom that would be deemed indicative?
• At what pace are more and more people becoming exposed to the virus - with or without getting "sick"? perhaps that would clarify if there is any merit in the notion of "herd immunity" effect?
• What should the next phases of isolation look like and where should they be implemented?
• Who, beyond recovered patients, could be candidates to donate serum for the development of a vaccine or a medication,

"There are mathematical models and statistical calculations designed to estimate how many patients there are in Israel", added Prof. Grotto. "The hypotheses range from about two thousand to ten thousand and even more, so we will take a series of surveys to identify the prevalence of the virus in the population".

Better late than never. The results will be intriguing.

Now the call to action needs to be to develop a standard of sampling and reporting, as measurement consistency and the international exchange of data and practices is vital to the fight against this Corona pandemic.