Is New Zealand ‘a particular case’ or does it show what would have been our best bet?

"I thought everyone would be going down the elimination path and follow the success of Asia." Reporters Online Exclusive While populations across Europe and North America are preparing for a harsh winter and the most austere Christmas in ages, their fellows in a country far away are in an entirely different situation. Early in the pandemic, New Zealand decided to go for elimination of the coronavirus. At just 100 cases and zero deaths, the experts ascertained they were - just

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“Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said no one will be intentionally exposed to this virus.”

Global Public Health Professor Devi Sridhar What should we do to save and improve WHO? What has made the difference between the strategy in countries such as England, Sweden and the Netherlands and many others across Europe? And what lessons from the first months should we apply now? I asked Devi Sridhar, professor of Global Public Health. Reporters Online exclusive interview It’s quite a miracle that in between all her other duties, Devi Sridhar found the opportunity to talk to

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Covid: Why the Western world is so reluctant to learn from Asia

The corona crisis painfully exposes the vulnerabilities of the usually dominant West. Not the virus itself, but society will determine how we get out of this. (Translation of article published in De Groene Amsterdammer on May 27th 2020) On Tuesday May 20th, a remarkable situation occurred during the technical briefing on the coronavirus in the Dutch House of Representatives. In reaction to messages from the attentive twitterer Edwin Veldhuizen, Jaap van Dissel (Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Control

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Guest post: A comparison of coronavirus approaches

Last week I was pointed at an interesting analysis of the global coronavirus approaches. The author, dr. Daxin Ni, a deputy director of the public health emergency center at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and former steering committee member of WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), compared two general approaches: the SARSlike and pandemic flu-like approach. Although I want to emphasize this is not my analysis and I do not necessarily agree with all

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