Containing Emerging Epidemics: a Quantitative Comparison of Quarantine and Symptom Monitoring

Corey M Peak; Lauren M Childs; Yonatan H Grad; Caroline O Buckee

Our results show that the benefit of quarantine over symptom monitoring is maximized for fast-course diseases (short duration of infectiousness and a short latent period compared to the incubation period), and in settings where isolation is highly effective, a large fraction of contacts are traced, or when there is a long delay between symptom onset and isolation. This delay ( !" ) not only captures ineffective symptom monitoring, but also the potential for symptoms to be masked for a period of time through biological (e.g., natural disease progression or self-medication with anti-pyretics) or behavioral (e.g., avoidance) mechanisms. In contrast, the widely-discussed "super spreading" disease characteristic did not independently impact the mean comparative effectiveness of interventions after holding R0 constant. However, this characteristic could remain important to understand disease control during highly stochastic stages of emergence and extinction (Fig S2) (18) . Our findings are consistent with Fraser, Riley, et al. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/072652 doi: bioRxiv preprint asymptomatically infected individuals are key epidemiological parameters for the feasibility of control via quarantine.