Estimated effectiveness of symptom and risk screening to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: Traveller screening is being used to limit further spread of COVID-19 following its recent emergence, and symptom screening has become a ubiquitous tool in the global response. Previously, we developed a mathematical model to understand factors governing the effectiveness of traveller screening to prevent spread of emerging pathogens (Gostic et al., 2015). Here, we estimate the impact of different screening programs given current knowledge of key COVID-19 life history and epidemiological parameters. Even under best-case assumptions, we estimate that screening will miss more than half of infected people. Breaking down the factors leading to screening successes and failures, we find that most cases missed by screening are fundamentally undetectable, because they have not yet developed sympto

SUBMITTER: Gostic K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7060038 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature