A Test-Based Strategy for Safely Shortening Quarantine for COVID-19

  1. Dana M. Lewis
  2. Scott Leibrand
  3. Howard Leibrand

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Abstract

Quarantine for COVID-19 is hard and could safely be made easier. Lengthy quarantine is difficult for many individuals to rigorously observe. To date, 14 days has been recommended as the quarantine period for people who are exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case, because most infections appear by then. For household close contacts, there remains a 0.5% chance that a COVID-19 infection may appear after that time, because the COVID-19 incubation period is up to 21 days. However, the risk of transmission after 14 days is so small that public health authorities have decided that 0.5% is an acceptable risk to balance the impact of quarantine on individuals, their communities, and our economy. Therefore, this 0.5% risk of infection is a useful benchmark to consider additional strategies for reducing the burden on individuals while reducing spread of COVID-19. With appropriately timed testing and awareness of possible symptoms, a non-symptomatic individual with a negative COVID-19 test at day 7-8 would be at lower risk of being or becoming infectious than someone completing a 14-day quarantine without testing. If we implemented a test-based strategy for determining the end of quarantine, these individuals could be safely released from quarantine at an earlier date, and would be able to more rigorously quarantine themselves while potentially most infectious.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.24.20238287: (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: 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).

    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.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.24.20238287v1 on medRxiv