2020年经济学人 Covid-19:世界已做好准备(3)（在线收听）

Confirming a suspected infection in a laboratory can take days. Some small European countries have just one or two laboratories able to process covid-19 tests. Europe’s entire supply of test kits is shipped from the two main laboratories of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDE), the EU’s public-health agency. America’s supply all comes from the CDC in Atlanta. It will be several months before commercial tests are available.

在实验室确认疑似感染可能需要几天时间。一些欧洲小国只有一两个能进行covid-19测试的实验室。欧洲所有的检测盒都是从欧盟的公共卫生机构——欧洲疾病预防和控制中心的两个主要实验室运来的。美国的供应全部来自亚特兰大的疾病预防控制中心。要过几个月才能进行商业测试。

Tests could soon run short if other countries experience covid-19 epidemics like China’s. Delays in getting the results would increase. A lab technician must first prepare the samples. After that, processing each test through a molecular-analysis machine can take an hour and a half. These machines also run tests for the seasonal flu and other diseases. A covid-19 epidemic in the middle of winter—peak season for the common flu—would quickly overwhelm laboratories in most countries. Rapid diagnostic tests for the new virus that are as quick to carry out in doctors’ offices as pregnancy tests were at the top of the wish-list at a WHO meeting about research priorities for covid-19 in February.

如果其他国家也像中国一样经历了类似的covid-19传染病，延迟确诊的情况会增多。实验室技术人员必须先准备样品。在此之后，可能需要一个半小时通过分子分析机器处理每个测试。这些机器还可以检测季节性流感和其他疾病。在普通流感的冬季高峰季节，covid-19的流行将很快淹没大多数国家的实验室。今年2月，在世界卫生组织召开的关于covid-19研究重点的会议上，对这种新病毒的快速诊断测试（像妊娠测试一样快）成为了人们的愿望清单上的首位。

Once an epidemic is in full swing, extensive testing to find everyone who might have the disease is less useful, says John Hick, an emergency coordinator at the Hennepin County Medical Centre in Minneapolis. At that point, he says, doctors will start to diagnose probable cases by symptoms alone—which is common practice for many illnesses, including the flu. Medics in parts of China are already doing this.

一旦流行病全面爆发，对每个可能患有这种疾病的人进行广泛的测试是没有用的，明尼阿波利斯市亨内平县医疗中心的紧急协调员约翰·希克表示。他说，到那时，医生将开始仅根据症状来诊断可能的病例——这是许多疾病的常见做法，包括流感。中国部分地区的医护人员已经在这样做了。

As with other contagious diseases, covid-19 patients in hospitals must be isolated to prevent its spread. When patients become too numerous to contain in isolation rooms, shared rooms, wings or entire floors may be set aside for covid-19 patients only. The Vrije University hospital in Amsterdam has dusted off its plans for doing this, including where to put “do not cross” lines to separate such sections, says Rosa van Mansfeld, who oversees infection prevention there. When all Dutch hospitals are overwhelmed, the lights will be turned on at the country’s “calamity hospital”, a fully equipped facility in Utrecht that is otherwise shut (it last opened to care for the victims of a terrorist shooting in 2019). In Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, an empty Ebola treatment centre will be used when covid-19 cases are identified.

与其他传染性疾病一样，必须对医院的covid-19患者进行隔离，以防止传播。当患者人数过多而无法在隔离病房内容纳时，共用的房间、侧翼或整层楼可能只留给19名covid-19患者。阿姆斯特丹自由大学医院已经重新制定了相关计划，包括在哪些地方设置“防止交叉感染”的隔离区，负责感染预防的罗莎·范·曼斯菲尔德说。当荷兰所有的医院都人满为患时，该国灾难医院的灯就会亮起来。这家设备齐全的医院位于乌得勒支，原本是要关闭的（上次开放是为了照顾2019年恐怖分子枪击事件的受害者）。在刚果首都金沙萨，一家空的埃博拉治疗中心将在covid-19确诊后投入使用。