Effectiveness of isolation, testing, contact tracing, and physical distancing on reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in different settings: a mathematical modelling study
Adam J Kucharski, PhD
Petra Klepac, PhD
Andrew J K Conlan, PhD
Stephen M Kissler, PhD
Maria L Tang, MMath
Hannah Fry, PhD
et al.
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Open AccessPublished:June 16, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30457-6
Background
The isolation of symptomatic cases and tracing of contacts has been used as an early COVID-19 containment measure in many countries, with additional physical distancing measures also introduced as outbreaks have grown. To maintain control of infection while also reducing disruption to populations, there is a need to understand what combination of measures—including novel digital tracing approaches and less intensive physical distancing—might be required to reduce transmission. We aimed to estimate the reduction in transmission under different control measures across settings and how many contacts would be quarantined per day in different strategies for a given level of symptomatic case incidence.
Methods
For this mathematical modelling study, we used a model of individual-level transmission stratified by setting (household, work, school, or other) based on BBC Pandemic data from 40?162 UK participants. We simulated the effect of a range of different testing, isolation, tracing, and physical distancing scenarios. Under optimistic but plausible assumptions, we estimated reduction in the effective reproduction number and the number of contacts that would be newly quarantined each day under different strategies.
