Discontinuous epidemic transition due to limited testing.

ABSTRACT: High impact epidemics constitute one of the largest threats humanity is facing in the 21^st century. In the absence of pharmaceutical interventions, physical distancing together with testing, contact tracing and quarantining are crucial in slowing down epidemic dynamics. Yet, here we show that if testing capacities are limited, containment may fail dramatically because such combined countermeasures drastically change the rules of the epidemic transition: Instead of continuous, the response to countermeasures becomes discontinuous. Rather than following the conventional exponential growth, the outbreak that is initially strongly suppressed eventually accelerates and scales faster than exponential during an explosive growth period. As a consequence, containment measures either suff

SUBMITTER: Scarselli D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8110767 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature