Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

March 9, 2020

Modeling the Comparative Impact of Individual Quarantine vs. Active Monitoring of Contacts for the Mitigation of COVID-19

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  • Peak et al examined the effectiveness of NPI on containing an outbreak of COVID-19. They found that with a short serial interval (4.8 days), individual quarantine can be an effective tool for outbreak containment in settings with high intervention implementation (at least 75% of infected contacts identified and quarantined). In areas where intervention performance is not as high, the ultimate burden on the public health system may be too large for contact tracing and individual quarantine to be as effective.
  • Consideration should be given to serial interval, quantity of pre-symptomatic transmission, public health capacity, and other situational factors when deciding about contact tracing and quarantine procedures. 

Peak et al. (Mar 8, 2020). Modeling the Comparative Impact of Individual Quarantine vs. Active Monitoring of Contacts for the Mitigation of COVID-19. Pre-print downloaded Mar 9 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031088