Related papers: Timely Tracking of Infection Status of Individuals…
We consider real-time timely tracking of infection status (e.g., covid-19) of individuals in a population. In this work, a health care provider wants to detect infected people as well as people who have recovered from the disease as quickly…
We argue that frequent sampling of the fraction of infected people (either by random testing or by analysis of sewage water), is central to managing the COVID-19 pandemic because it both measures in real time the key variable controlled by…
The emergence of an epidemic evokes the need to monitor its spread and assess and validate any mitigation measures enacted by governments and administrative bodies in real time. We present here a method to observe and quantify this spread…
There are many hard-to-reconcile numbers circulating concerning Covid-19. Using reports from random testing, the fatality ratio per infection is evaluated and used to extract further information on the actual fraction of infections and the…
When testing for infections, the standard method is to test each subject individually. If testing methodology is such that samples from multiple subjects can be efficiently combined and tested at once, yielding a positive results if any one…
Motivated by COVID-19, we develop and analyze a simple stochastic model for a disease spread in human population. We track how the number of infected and critically ill people develops over time in order to estimate the demand that is…
Major advances in public health have resulted from disease prevention. However, prevention of a new infectious disease by vaccination or pharmaceuticals is made difficult by the slow process of vaccine and drug development. We propose an…
As a consequence of missing data on tests for infection and imperfect accuracy of tests, reported rates of population infection by the SARS CoV-2 virus are lower than actual rates of infection. Hence, reported rates of severe illness…
The COVID-19 pandemic has plagued the world for months. The U.S. has taken measures to counter it. On a daily basis, newly confirmed cases have been reported. In the early days, these numbers showed an increasing trend. Recently, the…
To better predict the dynamics of epidemics such as COVID-19, it is important not only to investigate the network of local and long-range contagious contacts but also to understand the temporal dynamics of infectiousness and detectable…
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is unfolding as a major international crisis whose influence extends to every aspect of our daily lives. Effective testing allows infected individuals to be quarantined, thus reducing the…
We propose a mathematical model to analyze the time evolution of the total number of infected population with Covid-19 disease at a region in the ongoing pandemic. Using the available data of Covid-19 infected population on various…
Testing individuals for pathogens can affect the spread of epidemics. Understanding how individual-level processes of sampling and reporting test results can affect community- or population-level spread is a dynamical modeling question. The…
Group testing can save testing resources in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In group testing, we are given $n$ samples, one per individual, and arrange them into $m < n$ pooled samples, where each pool is obtained by mixing a…
Contact tracing is one of the most important tools for preventing the spread of infectious diseases, but as the experience of COVID-19 showed, it is also next-to-impossible to implement when the disease is spreading rapidly. We show how to…
We consider two closely related problems: anomaly detection in sensor networks and testing for infections in human populations. In both problems, we have $n$ nodes (sensors, humans), and each node exhibits an event of interest (anomaly,…
In limiting the rapid spread of highly infectious diseases like Covid-19 means to immediately identify individuals who had been in contact with a newly diagnosed infected person have proven to be important. Such potential victims can go…
Today, tracking and controlling the spread of a virus is a crucial need for almost all countries. Doing this early would save millions of lives and help countries keep a stable economy. The easiest way to control the spread of a virus is to…
In the group testing problem we aim to identify a small number of infected individuals within a large population. We avail ourselves to a procedure that can test a group of multiple individuals, with the test result coming out positive iff…
A wide range of approaches have been applied to manage the spread of global pandemic events such as COVID-19, which have met with varying degrees of success. Given the large-scale social and economic impact coupled with the increasing time…