Sustainable social distancing through facemask use and testing during the Covid-19 pandemic

  1. Diego Chowell
  2. Kimberlyn Roosa
  3. Ranu Dhillon
  4. Gerardo Chowell
  5. Devabhaktuni Srikrishna

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Abstract

We investigate how individual protective behaviors, different levels of testing, and isolation influence the transmission and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on an SEIR-type model incorporating asymptomatic but infectious individuals (40%), we show that the pandemic may be readily controllable through a combination of testing, treatment if necessary, and self-isolation after testing positive (TTI) of symptomatic individuals together with social protection (e.g., facemask use, handwashing). When the basic reproduction number, R0, is 2.4, 65% effective social protection alone (35% of the unprotected transmission) brings the R below 1. Alternatively, 20% effective social protection brings the reproduction number below 1.0 so long as 75% of the symptomatic population is covered by TTI within 12 hours of symptom onset. Even with 20% effective social protection, TTI of 1 in 4 symptomatic individuals can substantially 'flatten the curve' cutting the peak daily incidence in half.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.01.20049981: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.01.20049981v3 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.01.20049981v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.01.20049981v1 on medRxiv