Britain’s contact tracing conundrum

If there is hope, it lies in contact tracing. The countries that have successfully managed Covid-19 outbreaks and reopened without second peaks (at least so far) have done so through extensive track and trace infrastructure to prevent recurring outbreaks, sometimes after instituting general lockdown.

The UK plan is no different: for weeks, ministers have been talking up efforts to build a UK infrastructure to handle the difficult task of rapidly testing every suspected case of Covid-19, and then quickly contacting everyone they may have recently come into contact with, and testing them too.

The effects of these efforts where they work can be dramatic: South Korea had a recent outbreak caused by a single individual going to a series of nightclubs, which could have led to a second peak – but contact tracers found more than 5,000 individuals and managed to isolate more than 30 people infected by the super-spreader. Hong Kong restaurants are open as usual, and Wuhan in China has largely reopened too.