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. Absent a drug or vaccine, containing epidemic outbreaks is achieved by means of mobility restrictions and lock-downs. Here, the authors propose an alternating quarantine strategy, in which half of the population remains under lockdown while the other half continues to be active, resulting in a dramatic reduction in transmission.
【저자키워드】 viral infection, Complex networks, Statistical physics, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19, Vaccine, lockdown, quarantine, social distancing, Infection, Transmission, Consequences, Outbreaks, Epidemic, outbreak, interactions, SARS-CoV-2 disease, infected individual, help, Pharmaceutical interventions, resulting, provide, majority, comparable, reduction in, 【제목키워드】 quarantine, Epidemic,