September 16, 2020

three Cochrane Rapid Reviews of the evidence on different measures to slow spread of COVID-19: Quarantine, Travel-related control and Universal screening

This week, Cochrane published an updated special collection of systematic and rapid reviews focused on a range of public health measures to control and prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Three of the reviews examined the evidence on measures that aim to prevent potentially infected people from transmitting the virus to healthy people:

• Quarantine, where healthy people are separated from other healthy people in case they might have the virus – either because they have had contact with a case or have travelled from an area with high transmission rates (published Monday 14 September)
• Universal screening of people not seeking care for symptoms, either the general population or a targeted population based on their occupation – for example healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing homes (publishing Tuesday 15 September)
• Travel-related control measures, such as border closures, partial travel restrictions and entry/exit screening (publishing Wednesday 16 September)

Many countries have adopted combinations of these measures and are faced with the challenge of easing or strengthening each of these measures over the course of the pandemic. COVID-19 research is rapidly evolving, but the evidence base is still very uncertain.

Speakers included:

Prof Lisa Bero, Cochrane Senior Editor, Public Health – to introduce and give broader context

Dr Barbara Nussbaumer-Streit, Associate Director of Cochrane Austria, Danube University Krems in Austria – to discuss the Quarantine review

Dr Meera Viswanathan, Director of the RTI International-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Evidence-based Practice Center and Fellow at RTI International – to discuss the Universal Screening review

Jake Burns, Scientific Research Associate at the Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, at the LMU Munich – to discuss the Travel-related control measures review