Differentiating COVID-19 Response Strategies

Summary: Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic brings different challenges to the impacted countries. To combat this pandemic, different strategies need to be tailored and implemented in countries with different situations. First, in countries with an ongoing explosion of the outbreak (i.e. the USA, Spain, and Italy), strategies suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) which have been proven useful in China should be adopted for implementation. Secondly, countries in the regions that are still at the early stages of the outbreak (i.e., the Africa region, where many countries have only found imported cases) should further strengthen travel restrictions to reduce the risk of imported cases as well as the risk of developing local transmission. Furthermore, countries that have achieved great success in COVID control (i.e. China, South Korea, and Singapore) should continue implement the successful strategies and further roll-out strengthened new strategies to prevent new imported cases. In addition, surveillance on the genomic changes of SARS-CoV-2 is in need in all countries as some studies have found multiple mutants of SARS-CoV-2, although the impact of the mutation on the infectivity and lethality of the virus was still unclear.