Targeted adaptive isolation strategy for Covid-19 pandemic

Zoltan Neufeld; Hamid Khataee

To address these issues, we consider an alternative or complementary strategy. An essential feature of the COVID-19 infections is that it produces relatively mild symptoms in the majority of the population, while it can also lead to serious respiratory problems mainly in the older population (> 70), or in individuals with pre-existing chronic diseases [6] . For example, the hospitalization rate of the symptomatic cases in the 20−29 age group is 1.2% out of which 5% requires critical care and 0.03% of the infections lead to death [7] . In contrast, for the 70 − 79 age group hospitalization rate is 24.3% out of which 43.2% is critical and the fatality ratio of the infected is 5.1%. Although the transition between these extremes is gradual, a fairly sharp transition takes place around the age of 65. In addition to age, pre-existing chronic diseases is an additional criteria for identifying a vulnerable group in the population. Based on the limited currently available data around 97 − 99% of deaths due to COVID-19 already had underlying chronic diseases, which is of course very common in the older age groups.