Alternating quarantine for sustainable epidemic mitigation

Meidan, Dror; Schulmann, N.; Cohen, Reuven; Haber, Simi; Yaniv, Eyal; Sarid, Ronit; Barzel, Baruch

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20324-8

Cited by 47 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Similar to models that include separate compartments to differentiate populations by age or neighborhood, we should also differentiate subpopulations that have fundamentally distinct contact profiles, such as EW versus nEWs. Including essential workers can have substantial effects on the predicted number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 [ 61 ]. While models that account for heterogeneity in disease spread [ 14 ] capture some features of our model, understanding the effects of specific types of workers and any related interventions requires that essential workers be modeled explicitly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of essential workers in the context of social distancing for epidemic control

et al. 2021

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New emerging infectious diseases are identified every year, a subset of which become global pandemics like COVID-19. In the case of COVID-19, many governments have responded to the ongoing pandemic by imposing social policies that restrict contacts outside of the home, resulting in a large fraction of the workforce either working from home or not working. To ensure essential services, however, a substantial number of workers are not subject to these limitations, and maintain many of their pre-intervention contacts. To explore how contacts among such “essential” workers, and between essential workers and the rest of the population, impact disease risk and the effectiveness of pandemic control, we evaluated several mathematical models of essential worker contacts within a standard epidemiology framework. The models were designed to correspond to key characteristics of cashiers, factory employees, and healthcare workers. We find in all three models that essential workers are at substantially elevated risk of infection compared to the rest of the population, as has been documented, and that increasing the numbers of essential workers necessitates the imposition of more stringent controls on contacts among the rest of the population to manage the pandemic. Importantly, however, different archetypes of essential workers differ in both their individual probability of infection and impact on the broader pandemic dynamics, highlighting the need to understand and target intervention for the specific risks faced by different groups of essential workers. These findings, especially in light of the massive human costs of the current COVID-19 pandemic, indicate that contingency plans for future epidemics should account for the impacts of essential workers on disease spread.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of essential workers in the context of social distancing for epidemic control

et al. 2021

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“…The quarantine strategy weekly alternating half of the population on activity and the second half under quarantine and vice versa was shown to provide a dramatic reduction in transmission, comparable to that achieved by a population-wide lockdown, despite maintaining half of the socioeconomic continuity at 50% of its capacity. 12 Since weekly alternation synchronizes with SARS-CoV-2 disease time-scale, this strategy allows isolating infected persons at the time of their peak infection.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Curfew Effective in Limiting SARS-CoV-2 Progression? An Evaluation in France Based on Epidemiokinetic Analyses

Mégarbane

Bourasset²,

Scherrmann

2021

J GEN INTERN MED

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Background Since late summer 2020, the French authorities implemented a curfew/lightened lockdown-alternating strategy instead of strict lockdown, to improve acceptability and limit socioeconomic consequences. However, data on curfew-related efficacy to control the epidemic are scarce. Objective To investigate the effects on COVID-19 spread in France of curfew combined to local and/or nationwide restrictions from late summer 2020 to mid-February 2021. Design We conducted a comparative evaluation using a susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR)–based model completed with epidemiokinetic tools. Main Measures We analyzed the time-course of epidemic progression rate under curfew in French Guyana and five metropolitan regions where additional restrictions were implemented at different times. Using linear regressions of the decay/increase rates in daily contaminations, we calculated the epidemic regression half-lives (t 1/2β ) for each identified period. Key Results In French Guyana, two decay periods with rapid regression (t 1/2β of ~10 days) were observed under curfew, with slowing (t 1/2β of ~43 days) when curfew was lightened. During the 2-week pre-lockdown curfew (2020/10/17–2020/11/02) in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and Ile-de-France, the epidemic progression was unchanged. During the post-lockdown curfew (2020/12/15–2020/02/14), the epidemic slowly regressed in Grand-Est (t 1/2β of ~37 days), whereas its progression rate plateaued in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and increased immediately in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, Ile-de-France, and Nouvelle-Aquitaine, whatever the curfew starting time was (06:00 or 08:00 pm). Interestingly, a delayed slow decay (17 days < t 1/2β < 64 days) occurred under curfew in all regions except Ile-de-France. Conclusions Curfew allowed the temporary control of SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, however variably in the French regions, without preventing lockdown necessity. To accelerate the epidemic regression such as observed in French Guyana, curfew should be implemented timely with additional restrictions.

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“…These are: limiting interaction to a few repeated contacts akin to forming social bubbles; seeking similarity across contacts; and strengthening communities via triadic strategies [35]. Meidan et al propose "alternating quarantine" for sustainable epidemic mitigation [36]: at every instance, half of the population remains under lockdown while the other half continues to be active-maintaining a routine of weekly succession between activity and quarantine. This strategy provides a dramatic reduction in transmission, comparable to that achieved by a population-wide lockdown.…”

Section: Covid-19 Research Related To Network Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and Networks

Murata

2021

New Gener. Comput.

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Ongoing COVID-19 pandemic poses many challenges to the research of artificial intelligence. Epidemics are important in network science for modeling disease spread over networks of contacts between individuals. To prevent disease spread, it is desirable to introduce prioritized isolation of the individuals contacting many and unspecified others, or connecting different groups. Finding such influential individuals in social networks, and simulating the speed and extent of the disease spread are what we need for combating COVID-19. This article focuses on the following topics, and discusses some of the traditional and emerging research attempts: (1) topics related to epidemics in network science, such as epidemic modeling, influence maximization and temporal networks, (2) recent research of network science for COVID-19 and (3) datasets and resources for COVID-19 research.

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Alternating quarantine for sustainable epidemic mitigation

Cited by 47 publications

References 52 publications

Impact of essential workers in the context of social distancing for epidemic control

Impact of essential workers in the context of social distancing for epidemic control

Is Curfew Effective in Limiting SARS-CoV-2 Progression? An Evaluation in France Based on Epidemiokinetic Analyses

COVID-19 and Networks

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