Can Efficient Detection and Isolation Control an Epidemic?

2020/05/31 by Sarkar, Palash
#FOS: Biological sciences #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.00482

Abstract

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has very strongly recommended testing and isolation as a strategy for controlling the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this paper is to quantify the effects of detection and isolation in formal models of epidemics of varying complexity. A key parameter of such models is the basic reproduction ratio. We show that an effective detection and isolation strategy leads to a reduction of the basic reproduction ratio and can even lead to this ratio becoming lower than one.

Related

• A model for COVID-19 with isolation, quarantine and testing as control\n measures
• Should public health policy exempt cases with low viral load from isolation during an epidemic?: a modelling study
• Importance of suppression and mitigation measures in managing COVID-19 outbreaks
• Consequences of delays and imperfect implementation of isolation in\n epidemic control
• Shielding the vulnerable in an epidemic: a numerical approach