I have been following this over the last six weeks, reading a lot about the spread of COVID and reached the following tentative conclusions.
Because COVID 19 is a) easily transmitted and b) may not show symptoms for several weeks and c) there can be a period without symptoms when the carrier is infectious, COVID-19 is going to spread rapidly and containment will do little except slow the spread of the virus and moderate the crisis that is going to enfold the NHS.
However, during the "containment" phase, attempts to trace back a carrier's history of close contact and potential exposure are a real risk for us punters. Any punter who is actively making bookings and catches COVID 19 in this period faces the unenviable choice of either lying about their recent medical/exposure-history to the doctors treating them or outing themselves as a punter to doctors and nurses who will have their name, address and will presumably be recording details on their medical records.
Once the infection is widespread, weight of numbers will force the NHS to abandon containment and with it attempts to trace the history of exposure of those infected. At this point the risk of being outed disappears and punters are "only" risking exposure to the infection (assuming they have not caught it already).
Personally, I'd be tempted to try and catch the thing early, be ill, get over it and hopefully be able to resume "post-infection" punting. The two problems with this are 1) there are some reported cases of the virus re-occuring after "cure," and 2) if the stats in Italy are correct and my read of them is correct, the current reports of mortality rate may prove an underestimate and thereby getting infected a more serious risk.
