Simple Control for Complex Pandemics

Fay, Sarah C.; Jones, Dalton J.; Dahleh, Munther A.; Hosoi, A. E.

Amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic, quantifying the effect of strategies that mitigate the spread of infectious diseases is more important than ever. This article presents a compartmental model that addresses the role of random viral testing, follow-up contact tracing, and subsequent isolation of infectious individuals to stabilize the spread of a disease. We propose and examine two different models -- a branching model and an individual-based model -- both of which capture the heterogeneous nature of interactions that occur within a community. The branching model is used to derive analytical results for the trade-offs between the different mitigation strategies. The most important and perhaps surprising result from this analytical exercise is that a community's stability to disease outbreaks is independent of its underlying network structure. This conclusion is then illustrated through simulation using both the branching model and the individual-based model.