Schools do not need to close to reduce COVID‐19 but other measures are advisable

Axelsson, Inge

doi:10.1111/apa.15951

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…This policy is mainly about education and health and thus has a strong safety risk component. Considerable research has been conducted to study the effect of this policy on risks and children's health (e.g., Axelsson, 2021; Ludvigsson et al., 2021).…”

Section: Some Basic Definitions and Theory About Policy And Policy An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cases of real‐life policies related to risk: How can they enhance risk analysis and risk science?

Aven

2022

Risk Analysis

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Policies on risk constitute a core topic of risk analysis and risk science, and it is common at risk conferences to present real‐life cases of such policies, for example related to the handling of climate change and pandemics. Although these are of broad interest, showing how important issues in society are dealt with, it can be questioned to what extent and how these cases contribute to enhancing risk analysis and risk science. The present paper addresses this concern. It is argued that, in order to learn from the cases, they need in general to be more thoroughly followed up with discussions of concepts, principles, approaches, and methods for assessing, characterizing, communicating and handling risk. Describing a governmental policy on, for example, the handling of COVID‐19 is a point of departure for interesting discussions concerning its justification and performance, in particular in relation to risk and the most updated knowledge from the risk analysis field. Such discussions are, however, often lacking. The paper points to some key obstacles and challenges for the learning process, including the difficulty of distinguishing between policies, policy analysis, and politics.

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Section: Some Basic Definitions and Theory About Policy And Policy An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cases of real‐life policies related to risk: How can they enhance risk analysis and risk science?

Aven

2022

Risk Analysis

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show abstract

“…The model currently does not have a lockdown in place, as individuals still go to school and work, and instead have social restrictions imposed instead. Additionally, although schools were closed during the UK's response to COVID‐19, due to criticism of this policy, it cannot be assumed this would occur in a future epidemic 32‐35 . The optimal time for imposing lockdown, social restrictions and how these can be imposed can all be analyzed using our suggested framework.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, although schools were closed during the UK's response to COVID-19, due to criticism of this policy, it cannot be assumed this would occur in a future epidemic. [32][33][34][35] The optimal time for imposing lockdown, social restrictions and how these can be imposed can all be analyzed using our suggested framework. Household, workplace and school connections are the known contact connections that will be in the place throughout the model.…”

Section: Relationship Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How could a pooled testing policy have performed in managing the early stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic? Results from a simulation study

Heath,

Villar,

Robertson

2024

Statistics in Medicine

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A coordinated testing policy is an essential tool for responding to emerging epidemics, as was seen with COVID‐19. However, it is very difficult to agree on the best policy when there are multiple conflicting objectives. A key objective is minimizing cost, which is why pooled testing (a method that involves pooling samples taken from multiple individuals and analyzing this with a single diagnostic test) has been suggested. In this article, we present results from an extensive and realistic simulation study comparing testing policies based on individually testing subjects with symptoms (a policy resembling the UK strategy at the start of the COVID‐19 pandemic), individually testing subjects at random or pools of subjects randomly combined and tested. To compare these testing methods, a dynamic model compromised of a relationship network and an extended SEIR model is used. In contrast to most existing literature, testing capacity is considered as fixed and limited rather than unbounded. This article then explores the impact of the proportion of symptomatic infections on the expected performance of testing policies. Symptomatic testing performs better than pooled testing unless a low proportion of infections are symptomatic. Additionally, we include the novel feature for testing of non‐compliance and perform a sensitivity analysis for different compliance assumptions. Our results suggest for the pooled testing scheme to be superior to testing symptomatic people individually, only a small proportion of the population () needs to not comply with the testing procedure.

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“…The model currently does not have a lockdown in place, as individuals still go to school and work, and instead have social restrictions imposed instead. Additionally, although schools were closed during the UK's response to COVID-19, due to criticism of this policy, it cannot be assumed this would occur in a future epidemic [Leahy et al [2021], Engzell et al [2021], Burford [2022], Axelsson [2021]]. The optimal time for imposing lockdown, social restrictions and how these can be imposed can all be analysed using our suggested framework.…”

Section: Relationship Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How could a pooled testing policy have performed in managing the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic? Results from a simulation study

Heath

Villar

Robertson

2023

Preprint

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A coordinated testing policy is an essential tool for responding to emerging epidemics, as was seen with COVID-19. However, it is very difficult to agree on the best policy when there are multiple conflicting objectives. A key objective is minimising cost, which is why pooled testing (a method that involves pooling samples taken from multiple individuals and analysing this with a single diagnostic test) has been suggested. In this paper, we present results from an extensive and realistic simulation study comparing testing policies based on individually testing subjects with symptoms (a policy resembling the UK strategy at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic), individually testing subjects at random or pools of subjects randomly combined and tested. To compare these testing methods, a dynamic model compromised of a relationship network and an extended SEIR model is used. In contrast to most existing literature, testing capacity is considered as fixed and limited rather than unbounded. This paper then explores the impact of the proportion of symptomatic infections on the expected performance of testing policies. Only for less than 50% of infections being symptomatic does pooled testing outperform symptomatic testing in terms of metrics such as total infections and length of epidemic. Additionally, we present the novel feature for testing of non-compliance and perform a sensitivity analysis for different compliance assumptions. Our results suggest for the pooled testing scheme to be superior to testing symptomatic people individually, only a small proportion of the population (>2%) needs to not comply with the testing procedure.

show abstract

Schools do not need to close to reduce COVID‐19 but other measures are advisable

Cited by 8 publications

References 7 publications

Cases of real‐life policies related to risk: How can they enhance risk analysis and risk science?

Cases of real‐life policies related to risk: How can they enhance risk analysis and risk science?

How could a pooled testing policy have performed in managing the early stages of the COVID‐19 pandemic? Results from a simulation study

How could a pooled testing policy have performed in managing the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic? Results from a simulation study

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