Alternating quarantine for sustainable epidemic mitigation

Dror Meidan (1) , Nava Schulmann (2, 3) , Reuven Cohen (1) , Simcha Haber (1) , Eyal Yaniv (1) , Ronit Sarid (1) , Baruch Barzel (1)

1 Bar-Ilan University [Israël]
2 POLIMI - Politecnico di Milano [Milan]
3 MIMESIS - Computational Anatomy and Simulation for Medicine

Absent pharmaceutical interventions, social distancing, lock-downs and mobility restrictions remain our prime response in the face of epidemic outbreaks. To ease their potentially devastating socioeconomic consequences, we propose here an alternating quarantine strategy: at every instance, half of the population remains under lockdown while the other half continues to be active - maintaining a routine of weekly succession between activity and quarantine. This regime minimizes infectious interactions, as it allows only half of the population to interact for just half of the time. As a result it provides a dramatic reduction in transmission, comparable to that achieved by a population-wide lockdown, despite sustaining socioeconomic continuity at ~50% capacity. The weekly alternations also help address the specific challenge of COVID-19, as their periodicity synchronizes with the natural SARS-CoV-2 disease time-scales, allowing to effectively isolate the majority of infected individuals precisely at the time of their peak infection.

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Dror Meidan, Nava Schulmann, Reuven Cohen, Simcha Haber, Eyal Yaniv, et al.. Alternating quarantine for sustainable epidemic mitigation. Nature Communications, 2021, 12 (1), ⟨10.1038/s41467-020-20324-8⟩. ⟨hal-03136396⟩