Dynamic Modeling to Identify Mitigation Strategies for Covid-19 Pandemic

Patrick Jenny; David F Jenny; Hossein Gorji; Markus Arnoldini; Wolf-Dietrich Hardt

The second mitigation strategy we investigated is mass testing with isolation of detected cases. The same periods as in the cases of Figs. 5a and 5b are considered; once with a 1.7666 times higher detection rate (corresponding to a reproduction factor of one) and once with a 2.8240 times higher detection rate (same reproduction number as with 70% lower infection rate), respectively. The results are shown in Fig. 6 and one can see that they are very similar as those shown in Fig. 5 . This demonstrates that mass testing would have a similar effect as social distancing, and provided effective testing methods become available, this approach has the important advantage that the world's economy would not come to a halt. Like in the case of social distancing, unless one assumes that the virus can be defeated completely and globally, testing would have to be continued until an effective vaccine becomes widely available. Again, information regarding intensive care unit capacity is provided in the bottom logarithmic plots of Fig. 6. 11 All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.