Around the world, people are beginning to contemplate a life after lockdown
China appeared to have passed the worst
Some of Spain is returning to work
Germany is due to end social-distancing measures in a week’s time
And governments are grappling with what to do next
With no way to eradicate covid-19...
...and the ever-present risk of a resurgence
What’s the right way to leave lockdown?
Placing more than a third of the world’s population under lockdown...
...has done much to slow the spread of the new coronavirus
But there’s a big price to pay
The problem is that it’s incredibly damaging to the economy
And that has real consequences for people’s lives
The lockdown is really just a very intense form of social distancing...
...and you want to relax that as much as possible
So, you want to work out which elements of the social distancing...
...have the most effect on the disease...
...but the least effect on the way people lead their lives
The trouble is, no one is certain what the right formula is
So governments will need to strike a delicate balance...
...and take a very cautious approach to which measures they loosen...
...how and when
Take, for example, the tricky question of getting children back to school
Countries like Denmark and Germany have looked at reopening schools...
...although under very strict conditions...
...which means you have a sort of social distancing within the classroom
Good luck with that
As with other social-distancing measures...
...making the wrong call on this could lead to a resurgence of the disease
But given the broad impact of school closures...
...on children and their parents...
...and that young children in particular may not be as vulnerable...
...to the effects of covid-19...
...there is a case for trying to reopen schools...
...sooner rather than later
China has already pioneered the use of social-distancing measures...
...within schools to enable them to reopen
So far, the country has avoided a second wave of infection...
...which is why there may be other lessons to learn...
...from China’s staggered return to daily life...
...from capping the number of people allowed in restaurants...
...and public places...
...to severely limiting the number of workers...
...that firms can have on site each day
Social distancing isn’t a binary phenomenon
The way to think of it is a series of measures, each of which...
...does a little bit to reduce the spread of the disease...
...at a particular inconvenience or cost to the society
An element of trial and error is inevitable...
...which means governments will need to be prepared...
...to tighten the rules again if new infections start to mount
A second element, which helps you with all of that...
...is testing and contact-tracing
To detect people who have the disease...
...identify all the people they’ve been in touch with...
...contact them, test them, put them in isolation
If any of them are infectious, then you contact the people...
...that they’re in touch with
Tracking the virus in this way is an essential strategy...
...if countries are to become less dependent on social distancing
You can concentrate all that effort on the people...
...who are most likely to have the disease
A corollary of that is the people who you don't have to contact...
...are freer to move around than they otherwise would be
It’s a huge task but technology may be able to offer a short cut
Apple and Google are teaming up to work on technology...
...to help reduce the spread of coronavirus
To help deliver contact-tracing to Americans and people around the world
The idea is that when Apple and Android phones can work together...
...and be in touch with each other, if someone is infected...
...you can go back over the log that shows you...
...all the people that they’ve been in touch with...
...and identify very, very rapidly...
...you know, who the contacts have been and then direct your testing to them
Germany, Ireland and America are among the countries...
...now building infection-tracking apps that could run on...
...Apple and Google’s new protocol
Governments could use these apps to create a form of covid-19 passport...
...classifying individuals by whether they’ve tested positive or not
That’s a system that you’ve had used pretty thoroughly in China...
...such that people have to show their phone...
...and show they’ve got a green status, which means they can travel around
But to feel the benefits of this innovative approach...
...governments are going to have to really invest
It doesn’t work unless you also have an army of testers...
...to go around and follow up these leads...
...test all the people, ensure that they’re keeping their quarantine
Research suggests that America alone would need to employ...
...another 100,000 contact-tracers, at a cost of around $3.6bn
The other thing is you need the physical tests...
...you need the reagents, you need all the materials...
...and you need them manufactured on immense scale
Without this, further lockdowns could become inevitable
The less good your testing and the less good your contact-tracing...
...the more general and harmful actually...
...the lockdown has to be in order to create the same effect
You have a big, broad net...
...to catch the same number of infectious people
A third element is to make your health system more robust
When health systems get swamped...
...then the number of deaths really goes up fast
So, you can invest now in equipping medics with all the protection they need...
...having enough ventilators, having enough ICU beds
Which means that if the disease does start to pick up...
...the consequences are less bad
Of course, there’s the ultimate way to return to daily life
Scientists in Oxford are hoping to have a million doses...
...of a coronavirus vaccine by September
Three vaccines are already in clinical trials...
...two in the United States, one in China
There are many vaccine candidates in development
In the year or more it may take to deliver an effective vaccine...
...governments should be preparing for the next challenge...
...producing it
Finding the vaccine’s one thing...
...but then you have to manufacture it at scale
And that will be really quite hard
Part of the answer is to start building manufacturing plants now...
...at a cost of billions of dollars...
...before an effective vaccine has been found
Without this investment there’ll be a shortage of manufacturing capacity
And as long as there is a shortage...
...some countries are likely to push to the front of the queue
There is a danger that different countries try and...
...corner the market for their own citizens...
...which is understandable, but not very good for the world...
...because it means that vulnerable populations...
...and really key workers like health-care workers...
...who need protection in order to care for everybody else
They will go short
Locating manufacturing plants across the world...
...could help counter this “vaccine nationalism”...
...and ensure the vaccine reaches those most in need
Long before there’s any vaccine to be distributed...
...governments have more pressing calls to make...
...on the right way to leave lockdown
With few certainties to guide them...
...they’ll need to be nimble, versatile...
...and have vast reserves of patience for a return to everyday life...
...that will be anything but business as usual
Hi, I’m Edward Carr The Economist’s deputy editor
It’s amazing, in just how a few short months...
...the coronavirus story has come to dominate everything we do
So if you’d like to see more of our coverage...
...please click on the link opposite
Thank you for watching