Homebound by COVID19: The Benefits and Consequences of Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention Strategies

Oruc Aglar, B. E.; Baxter, A.; Keskinocak, P.; Asplund, J.; Serban, N.

Objectives. To evaluate the tradeoffs between potential benefits (e.g., reduction in infection spread and deaths) of non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID19 and being homebound (i.e., refraining from community/workplace interactions). Methods. An agent-based simulation model to project the disease spread and estimate the number of homebound people and person-days under multiple scenarios, including combinations of shelter-in-place, voluntary quarantine, and school closure in Georgia from March 1 to September 1, 2020. Results. Compared to no intervention, under voluntary quarantine, voluntary quarantine with school closure, and shelter-in-place with school closure scenarios 3.43, 19.8, and 200+ homebound adult-days were required to prevent one infection, with the maximum number of adults homebound on a given day in the range of 121K-268K, 522K-567K, 5,377K-5,380K, respectively. Conclusions. Voluntary quarantine combined with school closure significantly reduced the number of infections and deaths with a considerably smaller number of homebound person-days compared to shelter-in-place.