The focus and timing of COVID-19 pandemic control measures under healthcare resource constraints

Chen Wei; Zhengyang Wang; Zhichao Liang; Quanying Liu

The utility of isolating suspected cases was evaluated based on its influence on the NPI strength threshold required for successful suppression. The criterion for a successful suppression was to reduce the daily reproduction number to 1 before all beds would have been occupied. As seen in Figure 3A , the threshold for successful suppression clearly defined the resulting number of total infections. The number of total infections exhibited a noticeably discontinuous jump around the suppression threshold. While successful suppressions would cause a small percentage (median = 0.46%) of the population to be infected, failed suppressions would lead to much more infections (median = 96.6%).