BMJ Opinion: Robert Peckham: The covid-19 outbreak has shown we need strategies to manage panic during epidemics
Robert Peckham, MB Lee professor in the humanities and medicine, chair of the Department of History, and founding director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, discusses how the coronavirus outbreak discusses the role of panic in disease outbreaks. Peckham writes, “Panic is still too little studied and far too little understood. It is easily dismissed as a distraction to the main task at hand of containing an epidemic. And yet the management of panic is likely to be key to managing infectious diseases in an ever more connected world” (2/21).

BMJ Opinion: Laura Hallas: Covid-19 is a timely reminder we need to improve global diagnostic capacity
Laura Hallas, public health student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, discusses the importance of and offers recommendations for improving global diagnostic capacity beyond managing outbreaks, writing, “[W]e need to think of diagnostic capacity beyond crises. We can begin to achieve this goal in several ways. Firstly, national governments can embrace the 2018 Essential Diagnostics List (EDL). … Secondly, diagnostic care must be made financially viable … Finally, public health institutions should continue to support regional quality control initiatives like those run by the Africa CDC to improve disease surveillance” (2/20).