The Effectiveness of Targeted Quarantine for Minimising Impact of COVID-19

Alastair D Jamieson-Lane; Eric Cytrnbaum

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.01.20049692 doi: medRxiv preprint Figure 4 : Total infections caused by quarantine leakage assuming κ Q = 0.1. Black circles give the predictions based on full SIR dynamics, red crosses give the predictions of equation 5. Note that these calculations only include infections caused by imperfect quarantine, and ignore infections occurring either outside the quarantine population, or outside the quarantine time period. Figure 5 : Assuming perfect quarantine between age groups (κ × = 0), we are able to keep ICU demand below ICU capacity using a multi-stage release strategy. For the red curve, we assume quarantine of everyone over 50 years of age from day 65 to 160, and quarantine of everyone over 60 years of age from day 160 to 255 (that is to say, 3 month intervals for each stage of isolation). At no point is the under 50 population required to remain in quarantine, although moderate social distancing is required in the first 3 month window. Isolating only the 60+ cohort in the first 3 month window (as opposed to 50+) leads to overflowing ICU capacity by a factor of 5. An alternative strategy (blue), extends quarantine until day 290 (an extra month). This extended quarantine of the over 60 cohort reduces total ICU admissions from 17500 to 11400, and spreads these resulting admissions over a far wider time span.