With testing, Iceland claims major success against COVID-19
Hvammstangi (Iceland): Winter storms isolated the northern village of Hvammstangi from the rest of Iceland. Then spring brought the coronavirus, isolating villagers from each other. Now, as summer approaches, residents hope life is getting back to some kind of normal.
High schools, hair salons, dentists and other businesses across Iceland are reopening Monday after six weeks of lockdown, after this North Atlantic nation managed to tame its coronavirus outbreak.
Iceland has confirmed 1,799 cases of the virus, but just 10 people have died. The number of new COVID-19 cases each day has fallen from 106 at the peak of the outbreak to single digits — even, on some days, zero.
“I didn’t expect the recovery to be this fast,” said Iceland’s chief epidemiologist, Thorolfur Gudnason.
Iceland’s success is partly testament to its tiny population — just 360,000 people.
But it also reflects decisive action by authorities, who used a rigorous policy of testing and tracking to find and isolate infected people, even when they had no symptoms.
That has helped Iceland weather the pandemic without resorting to the near-total social and economic shutdowns enforced in many other European countries. Infected people and their contacts were quarantined, but the rest of the population was not forced to stay inside, only to be careful.
A volcanic island nudging the Arctic Circle, Iceland may be remote, but it is far from isolated. Its Keflavik Airport is a trans-Atlantic hub, and Icelanders are enthusiastic travelers. As in several other European countries, some of the first cases of the virus here were brought back from ski resorts in the Alps, including the Austrian village of Ischgl.
Early vigilance was key to Iceland’s success. The country confirmed its first case of the virus on Feb. 28, and declared Ischgl a high-risk zone on March 5, two days before authorities there confirmed the first case.
Gudnason said Iceland had been updating and testing its response to a global pandemic since 2004. Hospitals had been testing people arriving from abroad for a month before the first confirmed case, and a media campaign urged hand washing and social distancing.
“Each institution involved in the response knew its role from the start,” he said.
Iceland quarantined everyone returning from virus hotspots and began test-and-trace measures to locate and isolate every case.
