Opinion

Why random testing is the road back to normal

An urgent program to collect up-to-date data about the whole community is the only way to know if it is safe to lift the costly lockdown without the virus resurging.

Nicholas Fisher and Dennis Trewin

Apr 13, 2020 – 3.58pm

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The media is awash with data about confirmed cases of COVID-19, the number of people who have died from COVID-19-related illnesses, and how many appear to have recovered.

What about the data we need to inform decision-making, but which we haven’t got – the known unknowns?

Nicholas Fisher is a former chief research scientist in statistics in CSIRO and a former president of the Statistical Society of Australia.

Dennis Trewin was the Australian Statistician from 2000 to 2007 and is a former president of the Statistical Society of Australia.