Baker, M.G., Wilson, N., and Blakely, T. 2020. “Elimination could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases.” BMJ 2020;371:m4907, 22 December 2020.

Michael Baker and colleagues argue that aiming for elimination of community transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could offer important advantages over a suppression or mitigation strategy with ongoing transmission. The covid-19 pandemic might be remembered for the astonishingly rapid development of effective vaccines. But it should also be remembered as the first respiratory disease pandemic in which non-pharmaceutical interventions were widely used to eliminate transmission, including in large countries such as China. As the covid-19 pandemic continues to intensify across much of the globe, many countries are increasing their use of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as “lockdowns” to mitigate its harmful effects. Here we describe the potential benefits of using an elimination strategy to minimise the negative health and economic effects of the covid-19 pandemic. Pursuing this strategy will become more feasible when effective vaccines are widely available.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4907

FULL TEXT (PDF): https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4907.full.pdf