Messaging a friend who runs a school in South Korea yesterday. They were locked down for two weeks but now the school is open. They have to wear the masks but things are slowly returning to normal.
Key differences to the UK approach appear to be :
The South Koreans have the capability to community test 20k people per day, and they started doing that in February as they were one of the first countries to get it. ( Total number of UK tests as of March 20th 65k)
Any positive results were quarantined, all their recent activities were analysed and all contacts traced using credit card history and mobile phone data. All these contacts were tested and quarantined where necessary.
They had a total shutdown lasting 2 weeks.
In the UK we have very limited testing capability, its increasing but still nowhere near what's needed. You still cannot get a test despite last week's announcements of 25k per day capability being rolled out. Maybe thats why they looked at the herd immunity option. From the first announcements at Cobra 1 it looked like a government hiding behind the science and delaying the difficult decisions.
A big difference between the UK and South Korea of course, and you would never get people to surrender mobile phone data and credit cards over here, but the recent 'bank holiday weekend' mentality, and the delays, could mean we are heading for an Italy+++ situation unless they move fast.
