A first study on the impact of current and future control measures on the spread of COVID-19 in Germany

Maria Vittoria Barbarossa; Jan Fuhrmann; Julian Heidecke; Hridya Vinod Varma; Noemi Castelletti; Jan H Meinke; Stefan Krieg; Thomas Lippert

The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.08.20056630 doi: medRxiv preprint Testing not only suspected infectives but also persons without symptoms or known close contacts to identified cases is projected to reduce the number of fatalities even further, in particular if combined with rather strict isolation of identified cases for about two weeks and strongly reduced contacts between endangered individuals and possible infectives (scenario IO IC T1+). These interventions, if starting immediately and going into full effect within five to ten days (Table 2) , promise to reduce the number of fatalities by a factor of about 30 (18,000 expected deaths, Fig. 6c) and the peak number of infectives by a factor of two (660,000 active detected infections at the day of the peak Fig. 6b) This leads us to consider two more scenarios which include an at least partial lifting of the restrictions imposed thus far. We assume this to start around Easter (April 12th, 2020), including reopening schools, universities, and restaurants, resuming normal work and most club activities, and at least some resurgence in travel. Without any further intervention, this lifting of measures alone (scenario RB-HO-CS) is expected to result in an increase of some 15% of the death toll over the baseline scenario (Fig. 6d) , probably even more pronounced by a presumably overwhelmed health care system having to sustain an even higher peak number (Fig. 6b) of infectives compared to the baseline scenario. However, combining this partial rollback with significantly increased testing activity, isolation of identified cases and reduced contacts with endangered persons (Scenario RB-IO-IC-T1+) reduces the expected number of fatalities by a factor of nine (Fig. 6d ) and the peak number of known infectives by a factor of two (Fig. 6b) , again many more of them only weakly afflicted than in the baseline scenario. Even stricter isolation of cases but less severe restrictions on endangered persons (scenario RB IC+ IO-T1+) still results in reductions by a factor of six for fatalities ( Fig. 6d ) and close to 40% for the maximal number of simultaneously active known infectives (Fig. 6b) .