Cyclic exit strategies to suppress COVID-19 and allow economic activity

  1. Omer Karin
  2. Yinon M. Bar-On
  3. Tomer Milo
  4. Itay Katzir
  5. Avi Mayo
  6. Yael Korem
  7. Boaz Dudovich
  8. Eran Yashiv
  9. Amos J. Zehavi
  10. Nadav Davidovitch
  11. Ron Milo
  12. Uri Alon

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Abstract

Many countries have applied lockdown that helped suppress COVID-19, but with devastating economic consequences. Here we propose exit strategies from lockdown that provide sustainable, albeit reduced, economic activity. We use mathematical models to show that a cyclic schedule of 4-day work and 10-day lockdown, or similar variants, can prevent resurgence of the epidemic while providing part-time employment. The cycle pushes the reproduction number R below one by reduced exposure time and by exploiting the virus latent period: those infected during work days reach peak infectiousness during lockdown days. The number of work days can be adapted in response to observations. Throughout, full epidemiological measures need to continue including hygiene, physical distancing, compartmentalization, testing and contact tracing. This conceptual framework, when combined with other interventions to control the epidemic, can offer the beginnings of predictability to many economic sectors.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.04.20053579: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

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

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.04.20053579v4 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.04.20053579v3 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.04.20053579v2 on medRxiv
  5. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.04.20053579v1 on medRxiv