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Opinion | Coronavirus: how Hong Kong and other cities can get life back to normal in 28 days
- We shouldn’t have to wait for the disease to disappear altogether before life can return to some semblance of normality
- The incubation period for Covid-19 is up to 14 days. So, 28 days without local infections should be enough for a city to be declared safe
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Why you can trust SCMP
The world is now in the grip of an unprecedented crisis, which could have truly disastrous consequences, including a systemic collapse of the global economy.
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But these dire consequences can be averted, and the world can look forward to full recovery in a matter of months, if we all work together and steer public policies scientifically and confidently.
To engineer a recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, and reignite hope, policymakers will need to do two things: first, effectively contain or control the epidemic within their borders; second, let life return to normal when it is safe to do so, and open up borders to all other jurisdictions that have brought the pandemic under control.
I disagree with the view that it is too late for the world to contain the coronavirus, now that it is a full-blown pandemic.
Let us consider the experiences of Wuhan and Hubei. Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, was the epicentre of the epidemic, and there is no doubt the virus was spreading in the city like wildfire months ago. At that time, anyone from Hubei and especially Wuhan was considered a likely carrier.
Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, has recorded more than 50,000 cases of Covid-19. While Italy’s caseload has topped 69,000, it has a population of 60 million living over a much larger area.
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