scholarly journals A path out of COVID-19 quarantine: an analysis of policy scenarios

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lia Humphrey ◽  
Edward W. Thommes ◽  
Roie Fields ◽  
Naseem Hakim ◽  
Ayman Chit ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Latent Infection ◽  
Average Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Brute Force ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Testing Rate ◽  
Universal Testing ◽  
The World ◽  
Brute Force Approach

In this work we present an analysis of the two major strategies currently implemented around the world in the fight against COVID-19: Social distancing & shelter-in-place measures to protect the susceptible, and testing & contact-tracing to identify, isolate and treat the infected. The majority of countries have principally relied on the former; we consider the examples of Italy, Canada and the United States. By fitting a disease transmission model to daily case report data, we infer that in each of the three countries, the current level of national shutdown is equivalent to about half the population being under quarantine. We demonstrate that in the absence of other measures, scaling back social distancing in such a way as to prevent a second wave will take prohibitively long. In contrast, South Korea, a country that has managed to control and suppress its outbreak principally through mass testing and contact tracing, and has only instated a partial shutdown. For all four countries, we estimate the level of testing which would be required to allow a complete exit from shutdown and a full lifting of social distancing measures, without a resurgence of COVID-19. We find that a “brute-force” approach of untargeted universal testing requires an average testing rate of once every 36 to 48 hours for every individual, depending on the country. If testing is combined with contact tracing, and/or if tests are able to identify latent infection, then an average rate of once every 4 to 5 days is sufficient.Significance StatementWe demonstrate how current quarantine measures can be lifted after the current pandemic wave by large-scale, frequent-testing and contact tracing on the remaining susceptible populations. We present an analysis of the two major strategies currently implemented around the world against COVID-19: Social distancing & shelter-in-place measures to protect the susceptible, and testing & contact-tracing to identify, isolate and treat the infected. We find that a “brute-force” approach of untargeted universal testing requires an average testing rate of once every 36 to 48 hours for every individual, depending on the country. If testing is combined with contact tracing, and/or if tests are able to identify latent infection, then an average rate of once every 4 to 5 days is sufficient.

scholarly journals Quantifying the Effects of Social Distancing on the Spread of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talal Daghriri ◽  
Ozlem Ozmen
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
World Population ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Infection Rates ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Modeling Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

AbstractThis paper studies the interplay between the social distancing and the spread of COVID-19 disease—a widely spread pandemic that has affected nearly most of the world population. Starting in China, the virus has reached the United States of America with devastating consequences. Other countries severely affected by the pandemic are Brazil, Russia, United Kingdom, Spain, India, Italy, and France. Even though it is not possible to eliminate the spread of the virus from the world or any other country, it might be possible to reduce its effect by decreasing the number of infected people. Implementing such policies needs a good understanding of the system’s dynamics, generally not possible with mathematical linear equations or Monte Carlo methods because human society is a complex adaptive system with complex and continuous feedback loops. As a result, we use agent-based methods to conduct our study. Moreover, recent agent-based modeling studies for the COVID-19 pandemic show significant promise assisting decision-makers in managing the crisis through applying some policies such as social distancing, disease testing, contact tracing, home isolation, providing good emergency and hospitalization strategies, and preventing traveling would lead to reducing the infection rates. Based on imperial college modeling studies that prove increasing levels of interventions could slow down the spread of disease and infection cases as much as possible, and taking into account that social distancing policy is considered to be the most important factor that was recommended to follow. Our proposed model is designed to test if increasing the social distancing policies strictness can slow down the spread of disease significantly or not, and find out what is the required safe level of social distancing. So, the model was run six times, with six different percentages of social distancing with keeping the other parameters levels fixed for all experiments. The results of our study show that social distancing affects the spread of COVID19 significantly, where the spread of disease and infection rates decrease once social distancing procedures are implemented at higher levels. Also, the behavior space tool was used to run ten experiments with different levels of social distancing, which supported the previous results. We concluded that applying and increasing social distancing policy levels led to significantly reduced infection rates, which result in decreasing deaths. Both types of experiments prove that infection rates are reduced dramatically when the level of social distancing intervention is implemented between 80% to 100%.

scholarly journals There Is an App for That: Technological Solutionism as COVID-19 Policy in the Global North

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-215
Author(s):  
Linnet Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Public Health Policy ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Protective Material ◽  
Technology Sector ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Intervention ◽  
Global North

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic took high-income countries entirely by surprise. Despite funding pandemic preparedness programs in Asia for more than 20 years, donor countries had not experienced an uncontrolled pandemic since HIV in the 1980s. When Ebola, Zika, SARS, and MERS threatened, countries outside the immediate geographic neighborhood or income level of those diseases’ places of origin were left largely untouched. In contrast to the swift, comprehensive response of South-East Asian countries, authorities in Europe and the United States assumed this coronavirus would behave like its predecessors SARS and MERS.What happened next around the world was both harrowing and illuminating. Lacking protective material resources, the human capacity for contact tracing or understanding of the disease, policymakers in higher-income countries turned to technology for a miracle. The technology sector responded with history’s most extensive hackathon, illuminating the mutual shaping of technology and public health policy. The most striking feature of the technological response to the pandemic has been the degree of what Morozov has called solutionism driving it—the belief that complex problems can be solved by technological intervention alone.

scholarly journals Social Responsibilities in COVID-19: Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-153
Author(s):  
Mayur B. Wanjari ◽  
Deeplata Mendhe ◽  
Pratibha Wankhede ◽  
Sagar Alwadkar
Keyword(s):  
Death Rate ◽  
Respiratory Infections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Social Responsibilities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Coronavirus Infection ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Day By Day

Recent coronavirus discovered causes the coronavirus infection COVID-19 is also an infectious disease known to cause severe respiratory infections. This most recent virus and infection were unidentified until the epidemic in Wuhan in December 2019, China. Coronavirus has spread around the world and been declared a pandemic by the WHO. The disease has infected several nations, including Italy, Spain, and the United States, with brutality as the death rate rises day by day. The illness may transmit to cough or sneezes via small droplets. Therefore, social distancing is the only way to prevent the transmission as There is no vaccine available for prevention from thecoronavirus. One can reduce the chances of being infected by taking some social distancing measures which will reduce COVID-19 transmission. In the pandemic COVID-19, every individual’s responsibility is to follow all the social distancing measures, to follow the lockdown without being casual about the disease, to save our self, our family, community, and nation from novel coronavirus.

scholarly journals The COVID States Project #26: Trajectory of COVID-19-related behaviors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lazer ◽  
Mauricio Santillana ◽  
Roy H. Perlis ◽  
Alexi Quintana ◽  
Katherine Ognyanova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Upper Midwest ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Current State ◽  
Change Behavior ◽  
Current Prevalence ◽  
The Us ◽  
National Trends

The current state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is dire, with circumstances in the Upper Midwest particularly grim. In contrast, multiple countries around the world have shown that temporary changes in human behavior and consistent precautions, such as effective testing, contact tracing, and isolation, can slow transmission of COVID-19, allowing local economies to remain open and societal activities to approach normalcy as of today. These include island countries such as New Zealand, Taiwan, Iceland and Australia, and continental countries such as Norway, Uruguay, Thailand, Finland, and South Korea. These successes demonstrate that coordinated action to change behavior can control the pandemic. In this report, we evaluate how the human behaviors that have been shown to inhibit the spread of COVID-19 have evolved across the US since April, 2020.Our report is based on surveys that the COVID States Project has been conducting approximately every month since April in all 50 US states plus the District of Columbia. We address four primary questions:1) What are the national trends in social distancing behaviors and mask wearing since April?2) What are the trends among particular population subsets?3) What are the trends across individual states plus DC?4) What is the relationship, at the state level, between social distancing behaviors and mask wearing with the current prevalence of COVID-19?

scholarly journals Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (26) ◽  
pp. 14857-14863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renyi Zhang ◽  
Yixin Li ◽  
Annie L. Zhang ◽  
Yuan Wang ◽  
Mario J. Molina
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Protective Measure ◽  
Airborne Transmission ◽  
Social Distancing

Various mitigation measures have been implemented to fight the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, including widely adopted social distancing and mandated face covering. However, assessing the effectiveness of those intervention practices hinges on the understanding of virus transmission, which remains uncertain. Here we show that airborne transmission is highly virulent and represents the dominant route to spread the disease. By analyzing the trend and mitigation measures in Wuhan, China, Italy, and New York City, from January 23 to May 9, 2020, we illustrate that the impacts of mitigation measures are discernable from the trends of the pandemic. Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the pandemic trends in the three epicenters. This protective measure alone significantly reduced the number of infections, that is, by over 75,000 in Italy from April 6 to May 9 and over 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9. Other mitigation measures, such as social distancing implemented in the United States, are insufficient by themselves in protecting the public. We conclude that wearing of face masks in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent interhuman transmission, and this inexpensive practice, in conjunction with simultaneous social distancing, quarantine, and contact tracing, represents the most likely fighting opportunity to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. Our work also highlights the fact that sound science is essential in decision-making for the current and future public health pandemics.

World Trade in Manufactures

1960 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 18-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. Major
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Average Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
Yearly Rate

World exports of manufactures have risen rapidly in the last decade—indeed faster than world manufacturing production (chart 1). There were checks in 1951–53 and in 1958; even so the yearly rate of rise since 1950 has been 9 per cent in value, 7 1/2 per cent in volume. The pattern of this trade has been changing, particularly in the last five years: markets have grown faster in the industrial countries than in the less developed parts of the world (chart 2). Since 1954, in value terms, the exports of manufactures to the United States and to OEEC countries have been rising at an average rate of 17 per cent and 10 per cent a year respectively; to Latin America and the sterling area, only 3 1/2 per cent and 4 1/2 per cent.

scholarly journals American Indian/Alaska Native community infrastructure limitations amid the COVID-19 threat

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Christine Samuel-Nakamura ◽  
Felicia Schanche Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Community Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Telecommunication Networks ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Ecological Approach ◽  
Social Distancing

Objective: The recent SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic that is spreading throughout the nation is a particular threat to American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. The use of recommended methods to prevent or mitigate the spread of the virus, such as hand washing, social distancing, masks, contact tracing and community education is highly problematic at many of these sites. The objective of this paper is to identify and examine structural or cultural barriers to implementing COVID-19 recommendations on select reservation sites.Methods: A qualitative approach that collected and analyzed data from existing sources including newsletter articles, relevant policies and other published reports was instituted in the Spring of 2020. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) policies regarding COVID-19 recommendations to halt the spread of the virus were selected as the standard for COVID-19 prevention, surveillance and mitigation. News articles between March 1, 2020 and December 1, 2020 were identified using various search engines and tribal websites. Information from news resources, including literature reviews, newsletter articles, social media reports, and tribal policy announcements, were gathered and reviewed. Two U.S. southwestern communities are used as examples for the review.Results: Data collected from various sources paint a picture of American Indian communities that lack adequate community infrastructures, and have problems of residential isolation, close living quarters, and contaminated and scarce water supplies. Unsafe or limited water restricts handwashing. Limited informational tools, such as telephone, internet, computer and newsletters, restricted adequate notification of the novel coronavirus to American Indian reservation communities. Often, the lack of a physical home address can create barriers to healthcare accessibility and surveillance, as it limits the identification and access to households. In addition, many traditional cultures of AI/ANs emphasize the interrelatedness of all in nature and thus require an ecological approach to health education and preventive measures, identified as a limitation for COVID-19 surveillance and mitigation.Conclusions: AI/AN communities face a serious threat of contracting COVID-19. Four key infrastructure limitations to effective COVID-19 prevention, surveillance and mitigation were identified: limited access to safe water, deficient telecommunication networks (telephone, internet, and television), housing isolation and shortages, and inadequate medical services – are experienced by many AI/AN communities. Although there are 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States, the two identified in this study subscribe to an ecological approach to health education and preventive measures in that they believe in the interrelatedness of all things in nature. Surveillance questions may be misunderstood or seem invasive and prevention measures (masks, social distancing, and handwashing) may seem to be extreme measures to groups so close to the environment. Together, these present serious barriers to prevention and mitigation of the COVID-19 virus in this underserved population.

scholarly journals State-level needs for social distancing and contact tracing to contain COVID-19 in the United States 

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weihsueh A. Chiu ◽  
Rebecca Fischer ◽  
Martial L. Ndeffo-Mbah
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Epidemic Curve ◽  
Dynamics And Control ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Starting in mid-May 2020, many US states began relaxing social distancing measures that were put in place to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. To evaluate the impact of relaxation of restrictions on COVID-19 dynamics and control, we developed a transmission dynamic model and calibrated it to US state-level COVID-19 cases and deaths. We used this model to evaluate the impact of social distancing, testing and contact tracing on the COVID-19 epidemic in each state. As of July 22, 2020, we found only three states were on track to curtail their epidemic curve. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia may have to double their testing and/or tracing rates and/or rolling back reopening by 25%, while eight states require an even greater measure of combined testing, tracing, and distancing. Increased testing and contact tracing capacity is paramount for mitigating the recent large-scale increases in U.S. cases and deaths.

scholarly journals Universal Testing of all Pregnant Women for COVID-19: A Way Forward for Comprehensive Antenatal Care

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (09) ◽  
pp. 373-376
Author(s):  
Hema Divakar ◽  
Poorni Narayanan ◽  
Rita Singh ◽  
Divakar Gubbi Jyothi Girish
Keyword(s):  
Antenatal Care ◽  
Pregnant Women ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Obstetric Outcomes ◽  
Universal Testing ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

The COVID-19 global pandemic has placed undue stress on health systems all around the world. However, little is known about the impact of exposure to the virus on growing foetuses or the course of COVID-19 in pregnant women, who are often asymptomatic. To develop effective policies and recommendations, robust data for both asymptomatic and symptomatic pregnant women is crucial. This can only be acquired through universal testing of all pregnant women for COVID-19. The acquired data will not only enhance our ability to answer questions around negative obstetric outcomes, such as miscarriages and preterm labours, but also lead to enhanced contact tracing, which will slow the spread of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Estimating the COVID-19 Death Toll by Considering the Time-Dependent Effects of Various Pandemic Restrictions

Mathematics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1628
Author(s):  
Hoang Pham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Dependent ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
Johns Hopkins University ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

COVID-19, known as Coronavirus disease 2019, is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. As coronavirus restrictions ease and cause changes to social and business activities around the world, and in the United States in particular, including social distancing, reopening states, reopening schools, and the face mask mandates, COVID-19 outbreaks are on the rise in many states across the United States and several other countries around the world. The United States recorded more than 1.9 million new infections in July, which is nearly 36 percent of the more than 5.4 million cases reported nationwide since the pandemic began, including more than 170,000 deaths from the disease, according to data from Johns Hopkins University as of 16 August 2020. In April 2020, the author of this paper presented a model to estimate the number of deaths related to COVID-19, which assumed that there would be no significant change in the COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines in the coming days. This paper, which presents the evolved version of the previous model published in April, discusses a new explicit mathematical model that considers the time-dependent effects of various pandemic restrictions and changes related to COVID-19, such as reopening states, social distancing, reopening schools, and face mask mandates in communities, along with a set of selected indicators, including the COVID-19 recovered cases and daily new cases. We analyzed and compared the modeling results to two recent models based on several model selection criteria. The model could predict the death toll related to the COVID-19 virus in the United States and worldwide based on the data available from Worldometer. The results show the proposed model fit the data significantly better for the United States and worldwide COVID-19 data that were available on 16 August 2020. The results show very encouraging predictability that reflected the time-dependent effects of various pandemic restrictions for the proposed model. The proposed model predicted that the total number of U.S. deaths could reach 208,375 by 1 October 2020, with a possible range of approximately 199,265 to 217,480 deaths based on data available on 16 August 2020. The model also projected that the death toll could reach 233,840 by 1 November 2020, with a possible range of 220,170 to 247,500 American deaths. The modeling result could serve as a baseline to help decision-makers to create a scientific framework to quantify their guidelines related to COVID-19 affairs. The model predicted that the death toll worldwide related to COVID-19 virus could reach 977,625 by 1 October 2020, with a possible range of approximately 910,820 to 1,044,430 deaths worldwide based on data available on 16 August 2020. It also predicted that the global death toll would reach nearly 1,131,000 by 1 November 2020, with a possible range of 1,030,765 to 1,231,175 deaths. The proposed model also predicted that the global death toll could reach 1.47 million deaths worldwide as a result of the SARS CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. We plan to apply or refine the proposed model in the near future to further study the COVID-19 death tolls for India and Brazil, where the two countries currently have the second and third highest total COVID-19 cases after the United States.

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