Related papers: Quality-Quantity Trade-offs in Tests for Managemen…
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread rapidly across the world, leading to enormous amounts of human death and economic loss. Until definitive preventive or curative measures are developed, policies regarding testing,…
In this paper, we provide insights on how much testing and social distancing is required to control COVID-19. To this end, we develop a compartmental model that accounts for key aspects of the disease: 1) incubation time, 2) age-dependent…
COVID-19 data released by public health authorities features the presence of notable time-delays, corresponding to the difference between actual time of infection and identification of infection. These delays have several causes, including…
When testing for a disease such as COVID-19, the standard method is individual testing: we take a sample from each individual and test these samples separately. An alternative is pooled testing (or "group testing"), where samples are mixed…
With the increasing spread of COVID-19, it is important to systematically test more and more people. The current strategy for test-kit allocation is mostly rule-based, focusing on individuals having (a) symptoms for COVID-19, (b) travel…
In pandemics or epidemics, public health authorities need to rapidly test a large number of individuals, both to determine the line of treatment as well as to know the spread of infection to plan containment, mitigation and future…
Testing is a crucial control mechanism in the beginning phase of an epidemic when the vaccines are not yet available. It enables the public health authority to detect and isolate the infected cases from the population, thereby limiting the…
We study the effectiveness of tracking and testing in mitigating or suppressing epidemic outbreaks, in combination with or as an alternative to quarantines and global lockdowns. We study these intervention methods on a network-based SEIR…
The COVID-19 pandemic poses challenges for continuing economic activity while reducing health risks. While these challenges can be mitigated through testing, testing budget is often limited. Here we study how institutions, such as nursing…
We propose a novel testing and containment strategy in order to contain the spread of SARS-CoV2 while permitting large parts of the population to resume social and economic activity. Our approach recognises the fact that testing capacities…
The screening testing is an effective tool to control the early spread of an infectious disease such as COVID-19. When the total testing capacity is limited, we aim to optimally allocate testing resources among n counties. We build a…
Testing is a crucial control mechanism for an epidemic outbreak because it enables the health authority to detect and isolate the infected cases, thereby limiting the disease transmission to susceptible people, when no effective treatment…
COVID-19, a viral respiratory pandemic, has rapidly spread throughout the globe. Large scale and rapid testing of the population is required to contain the disease, but such testing is prohibitive in terms of resources, cost and time.…
This paper is based on the observation that, during Covid-19 epidemic, the choice of which individuals should be tested has an important impact on the effectiveness of selective confinement measures. This decision problem is closely related…
The COVID-19 crisis highlighted the importance of non-medical interventions, such as testing and isolation of infected individuals, in the control of epidemics. Here, we show how to minimize testing needs while maintaining the number of…
This paper studies if and to which extent COVID-19 epidemics can be controlled by authorities taking decisions on public health measures on the basis of daily reports of swab test results, active cases and total cases. A suitably simplified…
The group testing approach that achieves significant cost reduction over the individual testing approach has received a lot of interest lately for massive testing of COVID-19. Many studies simply assume samples mixed in a group are…
I study the economic effects of testing during the outbreak of a novel disease. I propose a model where testing permits isolation of the infected and provides agents with information about the prevalence and lethality of the disease.…
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…
The cataclysmic contagion based calamity -- Covid-19 has shown us a clear need for a comprehensive community based strategy that overcomes the sheer complexity of controlling it and the caveats of current methods. In this regard, as seen in…