Why lockdown? Simplified arithmetic tools for decision-makers, health professionals, journalists and the general public to explore containment options for the novel coronavirus

Gerry Killeen; Samson Kiware

Infectious carriers who exhibit little or no symptoms at the time 1-23 clearly contribute to the cryptic nature of an early-stage COVID-19 epidemic: In this case we assumed this accounts for 50% of cases lacking symptoms overt enough to consider self-reporting and seeking a test (table 1) . However, a much more important factor is the sheer volume of background noise arising from similar symptoms caused by more common pathogens, such as the common cold and malaria. Even though these simulations assume that capacity for conducting 11,400 COVID-19 tests per week would have been established in Tanzania before the outbreak began, total confirmed cases are only expected to exceed 100 about 3 weeks after the lock down is introduced. Most of these confirmed cases are . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.