The dynamics between disease and quarantine states over a single time period for the compartmental simulation.

Authors:
PhD Students: J. Massey Cashore, Ning Duan, Alyf Janmohamed, Jiayue Wan, Yujia Zhang
Faculty: Shane Henderson, David Shmoys, Peter Frazier*

Cornell University announced its plan to bring students back to campus for the fall semester, citing a model that showed on-campus instruction carried less risk of Covid-19 infection and hospitalization than would online courses. Initial modeling results suggest that a combination of contact tracing, asymptomatic surveil- lance, and low initial prevalence (supported through testing students prior to, and upon, returning to campus) can achieve meaningful control over outbreaks on Cornell’s Ithaca campus in the fall semester if asymptomatic surveillance is sufficiently frequent and if there’s sufficient quarantine capacity. This would dovetail with a complementary effort at Cornell to reduce transmissions through housing policy, class organization, and regulations on social gatherings.

For full paper, see here.
(*  corresponding author)