Adapting Covid-19 infection prevention policies based on community transmission

There has been an increase in the number of daily Covid-19 cases over the past week (July . This has led to increased anxiety among members of the public. The vacuum of knowledge we have of the virus is soon filled with fear of the unknown. Our fear of the next big wave of infections and its consequences gets further amplified through social media echo chambers and the 24-hour news cycle.

I believe the resurgence in daily cases is likely due to the importation of cases from overseas and local transmission. However, the daily reported Covid-19 cases are a heterogeneous mix of three types: imported cases, cases arising from known local clusters, and cases with no epidemiological link (community transmission).