Public health officials are asking Canadians to practice physical (social) distancing as a key tool in the containment of COVID-19. What is this and what are the implications? Shannon Majowicz of the School of Public Health and Health Systems explains why and how this method is effective.
What is the difference between social distancing and self-isolation?
Social distancing, which is now being called physical distancing, means putting enough physical space between yourself and others so that the virus cannot spread. The goal of physical distancing is to drastically decrease how many times each of us comes into “contact” with other people outside our immediate household, for all individuals, regardless of whether they may be sick or exposed. Physical distancing is a collective action, which means that for it to work, we all need to do it and do it well.
We do physical distancing by limiting the number of people we come into close contact with. For COVID-19, “close contact” doesn’t just mean touching (like hugging and shaking hands), but also means being within two metres of each other, or touching the same surfaces in relatively short time periods (like opening doors, pushing elevator buttons that others also touch).
This is why, to do physical distancing, everyone is being asked only to come into close contact with their immediate household as much as possible – hence the recommendations to telework if possible, not to have play dates, and avoiding all non-essential trips into the community, among other things.
Self-isolation is what everyone who might have been exposed (e.g., you were abroad for March Break) needs to do to make sure that – if they are harbouring the virus – they won’t pass it on to anyone else. It is especially important that people take the directive to self-isolate seriously, even if they feel well. The goal of self-isolation is for those who might have been exposed to the virus, and thus might develop COVID-19, to stay completely away from everyone else until the recommended time has passed, to make sure that they don’t spread the virus.
What happens if we don’t practice physical distancing?
Things will get very bad – very, very quickly. COVID-19 is a serious issue – one of the most serious diseases we’ve faced in our lifetimes, and it demands our attention and action.
Everyone is vulnerable. If we don’t all do our part, and work together to enact the recommended public health measures now and fully, COVID-19 will continue to grow in Canada, at an exponential rate, meaning that we could go from where we are now (just starting to see its impacts) to where places like Italy are (an overwhelmed and collapsing health system) in a distressingly short amount of time.
What is the science behind physical distancing?
This virus is spread by people, and a main driver of how it has -- and will -- spread is our actions and behaviours. The virus requires contact between people to spread. Physical distancing, if we all do it and do it well, removes that contact by creating a gap between people that the virus can’t jump.
This distancing isn’t just for people who are sick! People who are well can still be a jumping point for the virus to move from one of us to another. This is why all of us, regardless of how we’re feeling, need to practice physical distancing.
How long will we be required to practice physical distancing?
This is hard to know, in part because this is a new virus that we are still racing to understand. But it is reasonable to expect we will be asked to practice physical distancing in some form until our health-care system and testing capacities can be appropriately scaled up and until we start to have effective treatments.
Places like China, where case numbers are now starting to drop, have been at this for months. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
