United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a new round of social restrictions to curb the nation's climbing coronavirus cases before resorting to another round of lockdowns. Speaking before the House of Commons, Johnson stated that the country is at a "perilous turning point" similar to neighboring nations like France and Spain that have seen an increase in new infections in younger populations.
Warning that new social restrictions could last for six months, Johnson called for the nation to come together so that the situation could hopefully be better by the spring. For now, Johnson has called for pubs and restaurants to only service guests seated at tables and only serve until 10 p.m. The government is also encouraging citizens to work from home, changing course from Britain's recent push to move people back into workplaces. Moreover, face masks will be mandatory for workers in public serving environments including retail and transportation.
"If we follow these simple rules together, we will get through this winter together," Johnson stated in a televised address, quoted by the Associated Press. "But now is the time for us all to summon the discipline, and the resolve, and the spirit of togetherness that will carry us though."
Across the pond, United States President Donald Trump reiterated that the U.S. will not impose any more lockdowns, even as new infection rates continue to rise in a large amount of states.
The Trump administration has largely left the coronavirus decisions to state and local authorities in its response to the pandemic. On Tuesday, the U.S. crossed the grim threshold of 200,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths, accounting for over 20% of all global deaths. In addition, the nation now stands at over 7 million confirmed cases of the virus.
Contact Tracing Failure
According to a study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that focused on two counties in North Carolina, health officials struggled to get the public to participate in contact tracing despite increased efforts to encourage increased coronavirus investigations.
"Despite aggressive efforts by health department staff members to perform case investigations and contact tracing, many persons with COVID-19 did not report contacts, and many contacts were not researched," the authors of the study wrote. "The relatively low participation and cooperation with contact tracing suggests a lack of community support and engagement with contact tracing. This, coupled with delays in testing results are contributing to ongoing transmission."
The researchers stated that the data compiled in the study is consistent with other states across the country, demonstrating the lack of extensive contact tracing across the nation. Contact tracing helps find all parties involved in an outbreak so that infected individuals can isolation to halt the continued community spread. The C.D.C. noted that the percentage of people who could not be contacted for coronavirus tracing was higher that tracing efforts for other past infectious diseases in the U.S.
The study's authors pointed to multiple reasons why contact tracing efforts for the pandemic may be hindered, including limiting efforts to just a conversation instead of full reports and investigations and infected individuals not wanted to subject their contacts to quarantine.
"This assessment revealed that, although these two country health departments investigated the majority of index cases, a high proportion of persons with COVID-19 did not report contacts, many contacts were not reached, and the time needed to notify contacts likely reduced the impact of contact tracing as a mitigation strategy," the authors concluded. "These findings indicate that improved timelines of contact tracing, community engagement, and increased use of community-wide mitigation are needed to interrupt SARS-CoV-2 transmission."