Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

May 21, 2020

Individual Quarantine versus Active Monitoring of Contacts for the Mitigation of COVID-19: A Modelling Study

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  • Peak et al. modeled the relative efficacy of individual quarantine and active monitoring of contacts to control SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Modeling simulations suggest that individual quarantine could contain an outbreak of COVID-19 in 4.8 days in 84% of simulations, but only in settings with high intervention performance (e.g., 75% of infected contacts are individually quarantined).  
  • The burden of the number of contacts traced for active monitoring or quarantine increases in settings in which the outbreak continues to grow. If physical distancing reduces R0 to be below 1.25, then active monitoring of 50% of contacts can result in overall outbreak control. 

Peak et al. (May 20, 2020). Individual Quarantine versus Active Monitoring of Contacts for the Mitigation of COVID-19: A Modelling Study. The Lancet Infectious Diseases. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30361-3