Optimal COVID-19 testing strategy on limited resources

  1. Onishi Tatsuki
  2. Honda Naoki
  3. Yasunobu Igarashi

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Abstract

The last three years have been spent combating COVID-19, and governments have been seeking optimal solutions to minimize the negative impacts on societies. Although two types of testing have been performed for this—follow-up testing for those who had close contact with infected individuals and mass-testing of those with symptoms—the allocation of resources has been controversial. Mathematical models such as the susceptible, infectious, exposed, recovered, and dead (SEIRD) model have been developed to predict the spread of infection. However, these models do not consider the effects of testing characteristics and resource limitations. To determine the optimal testing strategy, we developed a testing-SEIRD model that depends on testing characteristics and limited resources. In this model, people who test positive are admitted to the hospital based on capacity and medical resources. Using this model, we examined the infection spread depending on the ratio of follow-up and mass-testing. The simulations demonstrated that the infection dynamics exhibit an all-or-none response as infection expands or extinguishes. Optimal and worst follow-up and mass-testing combinations were determined depending on the total resources and cost ratio of the two types of testing. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the cumulative deaths varied significantly by hundreds to thousands of times depending on the testing strategy, which is encouraging for policymakers. Therefore, our model might provide guidelines for testing strategies in the cases of recently emerging infectious diseases.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0281319
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.31.21262868v4 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.31.21262868v3 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.31.21262868v2 on medRxiv
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    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

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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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  6. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.31.21262868v1 on medRxiv