Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

September 14, 2020

High COVID-19 Transmission Potential Associated with Re-Opening Universities Can Be Mitigated with Layered Interventions

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  • [Preprint, not peer-reviewed] A modeling study of university reopening in the UK compared transmission dynamics under different assumptions about the infectiousness of asymptomatic patients. Assuming an infectious period of 5 days, the authors report that if asymptomatic cases are 50% as infectious as symptomatic cases, then 20% undergraduates would be infected. If asymptomatic cases are equally as infectious as symptomatic cases, 94% would be infected. First-year students are predicted to be the main drivers of transmission due to high numbers of contacts in communal residences. Reduced face-to-face interactions and reduced living circles could effectively decrease infections by 75%. The model predicts that mass testing of students is not the most effective option due to the cost of large-scale self-isolation.

Brooks-Pollock et al. (Sept 11, 2020). High COVID-19 Transmission Potential Associated with Re-Opening Universities Can Be Mitigated with Layered Interventions. Pre-print downloaded September 14 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.10.20189696