As Covid-19 infections soar across the U.S., some states are tightening restrictions and reinstituting quarantine measures to slow the virus’ spread.
As Covid-19 infections soar across the U.S., some states are tightening restrictions and reinstituting quarantine measures to slow the virus’ spread. A model developed by MIT researchers shows a direct link between the number of people who become infected and how effectively a state maintains its quarantine measures.
The researchers described their model in a paper published in Cell Patterns in November, showing that the system could recapitulate the effects that quarantine measures had on viral spread in countries around the world. In their next study, recently posted to the preprint server medRxiv, they drilled into data from the United States last spring and summer. That earlier surge in infections, they found, was strongly related to a drop in “quarantine strength” — a measure the team defines as the ability to keep infected individuals from infecting others.
The latest study focuses on last spring and early summer, when the southern and west-central United States saw a precipitous rise in infections as states in those regions reopened and relaxed quarantine measures. The researchers used their model to calculate the quarantine strength in these states, many of which were early to reopen following initial lockdowns in the spring.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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