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A report by the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in the United States, set out four phases in the course of the global pandemic and, crucially, the triggers that tell us when we can move from one phase to the next.

Along with a report from the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, guidelines from the World Health Organization and interviews with medical experts, we’ve set some approximate signposts that could herald a return to something approaching normalcy.

Photo by Jan Frew via REUTERS

Phase one: Slowing the spread

Canadians are already intimately familiar with phase one. We are living it.

Phase one involves physical distancing, only making essential trips to the store and huddling at home with direct family or roommates. While Canadians try to keep their distance from each other, the government is furiously building testing capacity and ramping up health care infrastructure, including increasing the supply of personal protective equipment for front line health care workers.

We are also building the country’s capacity to conduct contact tracing and offering voluntary isolation and quarantine to people who are possibly infected. The government has embarked on a recruitment campaign for volunteers to track COVID-19 cases.

If there’s one thing to pay attention to during phase one, though, it’s testing.

The Center for American Progressive recommended a stay-at-home policy of at least 45 days and ramping up testing capacity to the point where everyone with a fever is tested, along with everyone in that person’s household.