Understanding ‘Zero Covid’ and why it could work

Covid strategies have two phases - the suppression and the release.  In the context of where Ireland and much of the northern hemisphere finds itself ten months into this pandemic, this episode of Ibec Voices examines Ireland’s strategy to date in its fight against Covid-19. Ireland’s National Covid Strategy proposes release through national levels 5 to 1 on activities and sectoral reopenings. The Zero Covid strategy is more zonal in release, advocating for reopening by areas that are green zones in conjunction with a robust test track and trace system.We take a look at an alternative strategy to crush the virus and restore greater social and economic activity while we await mass vaccination programmes to take effect.Our guest is Yaneer Bar-Yam, President of the New England Systems Institute. Yaneer’s work has concerned itself with global pandemics for over 15 years including contributing to the response protocols which successfully stopped the outbreak of Ebola in Africa in 2014.Yaneer is an MIT-trained physicist and complexity scientist and he has been following Ireland’s experience with the Covid pandemic and the response by Government and its stakeholders. He is also Founder of the endcoronavirus.org network. Thank you for listening. To explore all of Ibec's podcast offering, visit here.  Make sure to follow Ibec Podcasts to stay up to date with new episodes.