EXITCOV Strategy
A contribute from Italy
Manuela Alessandra Filippi & Giovanni Ullu
INTRODUCTION: during the political elections some statistical companies are producing the exit poll before the elections and during the bare of the cards. These companies will certainly have the network of sections from across the country and the chance of producing extremely reliable territorial samples.
So why not apply the same model to the national mapping of the Pandemic, engaging these companies with the task of creating the sampling network on the whole national territory?
The idea is simple: let’s choose New York as an example: if with the same strategy of the statistical companies we divide the city into small portions, henceforth called MINI-ISLANDS, (starting with one thousand mini-islands for the entire city), we can divide each neighborhood into sections, just like what happens during the elections, identifying for each section a base camp where to place ambulances or minibuses equipped for sampling and capable of collect the samples carried out on the population. We can start with 3.000 samples for each of the 1000 mini-islands.
1- That there are MINI-ISLANDS with clearly marked infection rates above average, as can actually be expected. In our example are the Fourth and the fifth mini-island of Manhattan.
2- That within the city there may be different MINI-ISLANDS infection density: white: zero infection / blue: low density / yellow: medium/ red: High (to define the number of infections that determine the attribution of the MINI-ISLAND color).
With this “tight mesh” we would be able to identify, with a high outbreaks and timeliness, effectively circumscribing them, the SMALL AREAS of the healthy and the infected. In doing so we could consider RED ISLAND only the areas with a high percentage of infection , without having to limit all other MINI-ISLANDS, or entire cities or, even worse, entire regions.
While aware of the perfectibility of this idea, we think that with this strategy you can quickly get to a real one x-ray of the pandemic on the whole national territory. Considering that a statistical company can create for each sample many parameters / variables: sex, marital status, age, proximity or distance from the border of the mini-island (or section), job etc.. It would be easy to create a simple algorithm based on MICROSOFT EXCEL to produce an App. controlling a huge mountain of useful data. We think that such a work can contribute to the creation of a vast algorithm for analyzing data and functions. Hoping that you may find our proposal interesting, we remain in waiting for your feedback.
Kind Regards,
Manuela Alessandra M. FIlippi & Giovanni Ullu