Homebound by COVID19: the benefits and consequences of non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies

Abstract

Background Recent research has been conducted by various countries and regions on the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on reducing the spread of COVID19. This study evaluates the tradeoffs between potential benefits (e.g., reduction in infection spread and deaths) of NPIs for COVID19 and being homebound (i.e., refraining from interactions outside of the household). Methods An agent-based simulation model, which captures the natural history of the disease at the individual level, and the infection spread via a contact network assuming heterogeneous population mixing in households, peer groups (workplaces, schools), and communities, is adapted to project the disease spread and estimate the number of homebound people and person-days under multiple scenarios, including combinations of shelter-in-place, voluntary quarantine, and school closure in Georgia from March 1 to September 1, 2020. Results Compared to no intervention, under voluntary quarantine, voluntary quarantine with school closure, and shelter-in-place with school closure scenarios 4.5, 23.1, and 200+ homebound adult-days were required to prevent one infection, with the maximum number of adults homebound on a given day in the range of 119 K–248 K, 465 K–499 K, 5388 K-5389 K, respectively. Compared to no intervention, school closure only reduced the percentage of the population infected by less than 16% while more than doubling the peak number of adults homebound. Conclusions Voluntary quarantine combined with school closure significantly reduced the number of infections and deaths with a considerably smaller number of homebound person-days compared to shelter-in-place.

Government responses and COVID-19 deaths: Global evidence across multiple pandemic waves

“…The NPIs implemented in New York City were estimated to have reduced cases numbers by 72% and deaths by 76% [67]. While some studies shows the relationship between single NPI and the reduction in COVID-19 incidences or reproduction number, others try to identify the more effective blends of NPI sub-categories [68][69][70]. However, researchers also find the synergistic benefits of implementing a suite of multiple NPIs, which lends support to our approach of assessing the relationship between overall NPIs and deaths [71,72].…”

Evaluating scenarios for school reopening under COVID19

“…The impact of other non-pharmaceutical public health measures, including workplace closings, voluntary quarantine compliance, shelter-in-place, and masking mandates have been considered and compared in prior work [ 7 , 9 , 20 , 31 , 53 – 56 ]. Some studies found that the public health effects of school closures are similar to that of workplace closures [ 20 , 53 , 54 ].…”

High Resolution Spatio-Temporal Model for Room-Level Airborne Pandemic Spread

“…PIPs are all the actions of individuals that aim to control the pandemic spread. Indeed, policy makers use multiple types of PIPS, such as lockdowns [81] and artificial job separations [25]. For airborne pandemics, mask-wearing PIP is considered efficient and was used for the COVID-19 pandemic [82] and the influenza pandemic [83] to name a few.…”

“…For airborne pandemics, mask-wearing PIP is considered efficient and was used for the COVID-19 pandemic [82] and the influenza pandemic [83] to name a few. However, in practice, masks differ in their effectiveness and the portion of the population that wears them [81,82,84]. Hence, we define the mask-wearing PIP using two parameters η ∈ [0, 1] and κ ∈ [0, 1] that stand for the portion of the population that wears a mask and the portion of the pathogen particles filtered by the mask, respectively.…”