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

• A low-damage scenario could be predicted by enriching the baseline measures with significantly increased testing activity (not only suspected SARS-CoV-2 infectives but also persons without symptoms or known close contacts to identified cases), a rather strict isolation protocol of detected SARS-CoV-2 cases for about two weeks, and reduced contacts with vulnerable individuals. According to the model, these interventions, if starting immediately and going into full effect within five to ten days seem to reduce the number of fatalities to a minimum of 18,000 and the peak number of infectives to 660,000 active detected infections at the day of the peak in the third week of April. However, this dramatic slowdown of the epidemic comes with a price since successfully preventing new infections also slows down the increase of the number of recovered, and hence immune, individuals. For this scenario to work effectively, all the above mentioned strict control measures (including BSL measures) must remain in effect for more than one year.