The Impact of Host-Based Early Warning on Disease Outbreaks

Mark Hernandez; Lauren E Milechin; Shakti K Davis; Rich DeLaura; Kajal T Claypool; Albert Swiston

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.06.20029793 doi: medRxiv preprint infect the susceptible population. While a self-monitoring policy reduces transmission rates by isolating the self-reported sick, both the latency α and an imperfect self-reporting probability (θ<1) can lead to opportunities for transmission. Outputs for the SEIR model with self-reporting and isolation are shown in Figure 4 . This policy addition leads to both fewer total individuals contracting the disease and fewer individuals acutely symptomatic at the height of the outbreak. The new isolated compartment L, however, has other costs associated with lost duty days, mandated isolation, medical facilities, and treatment. The choices of self-reporting probability and rate are critical in this scenario, and, in reality, may have such broad distributions that relying on this policy in an acute outbreak may do little to prevent additional infections.