Your house number could be the key to the safe relaxation of COVID-19-related restrictions if government follow a new exit strategy use an ‘odds-and-evens’ approach to allowing people to head back to work and enjoy other activities after weeks of lockdown.
A paper co-authored by QUT’s Professor Adrian Barnett published in the British Medical Journal.
Co-authored by Professor Adrian Barnett, a statistician with QUT’s School of Public Health and Social Work, the paper suggests governments around the globe are seeking to balance competing priorities.
“Social distancing has certainly been proven to reduce the rate of transmission of COVID-19 but has had a negative impact on the economy and created other health issues,” said Professor Barnett.
“A major problem with relaxing restrictions too quickly is the limited evidence on how this will affect transmission of the virus and no-one wants to see another wave of infection and deaths which would lead to a return to lockdown.
“We propose an interim solution in which allowing people to return to a less-restricted life should be based on odd or even house numbers. For example, people in odd numbered houses have relaxed restrictions on odd days in the month (1st, 3rd, etc) and people in even number houses on even days (2nd, 4th, etc).
“This halves the population mixing, which reduces the risk of a new wave occurring, and it creates useful data for judging whether restrictions can be further relaxed or should be tightened.”
Read more at the QUT website and in BMJ.
