Optimizing COVID-19 testing strategies on college campuses: evaluation of the health and economic costs.

ABSTRACT: Colleges and universities in the US struggled to provide safe in-person education throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing coupled with isolation is a nimble intervention strategy that can be tailored to mitigate health and economic costs, as the virus and our arsenal of medical countermeasures continue to evolve. We developed a decision-support tool to aid in the design of university-based testing strategies using a mathematical model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Applying this framework to a large public university reopening in the fall of 2021 with a 60% student vaccination rate, we find that the optimal strategy, in terms of health and economic costs, is twice weekly antigen testing of all students. This strategy provides a 95% guarantee that, throughout the fall semester, case counts w

SUBMITTER: Johnson KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9753781 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature