| Literature DB >> 32727898 |
Daniel Duque1, David P Morton2, Bismark Singh3, Zhanwei Du4, Remy Pasco5, Lauren Ancel Meyers4,6.
Abstract
Following the April 16, 2020 release of the Opening Up America Again guidelines for relaxing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) social distancing policies, local leaders are concerned about future pandemic waves and lack robust strategies for tracking and suppressing transmission. Here, we present a strategy for triggering short-term shelter-in-place orders when hospital admissions surpass a threshold. We use stochastic optimization to derive triggers that ensure hospital surges will not exceed local capacity and lockdowns are as short as possible. For example, Austin, Texas-the fastest-growing large city in the United States-has adopted a COVID-19 response strategy based on this method. Assuming that the relaxation of social distancing increases the risk of infection sixfold, the optimal strategy will trigger a total of 135 d (90% prediction interval: 126 d to 141 d) of sheltering, allow schools to open in the fall, and result in an expected 2,929 deaths (90% prediction interval: 2,837 to 3,026) by September 2021, which is 29% of the annual mortality rate. In the months ahead, policy makers are likely to face difficult choices, and the extent of public restraint and cocooning of vulnerable populations may save or cost thousands of lives.Entities:
Keywords: COVID-19; cocooning; optimization; public health response; social distancing
Mesh:
Year: 2020 PMID: 32727898 PMCID: PMC7443931 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2009033117
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A ISSN: 0027-8424 Impact factor: 11.205
Fig. 1.Projections for COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in Austin, TX, metropolitan area under baseline and optimized policies for initiating and relaxing social distancing measures. A, C, E, and G show daily hospitalizations and cumulative deaths. COVID-19 surge capacity in Austin is approximately 3,240 beds (red line). Daily COVID-19 hospitalizations for the entire metropolitan area from March 13 to April 28 are shown in A; data up to April 16 were used to fit the seed date and transmission rates in the model. Optimized strategies can relax lockdowns when total hospitalizations drop below a safety threshold of 60% capacity (blue line). B, D, F, and H show daily hospital admissions. Optimized strategies use a stepped threshold: Lockdowns are enacted when the 7-d rolling average in daily admissions surpasses a threshold and are relaxed when admissions decline below a threshold (indicated with blue horizontal lines), if hospitalizations are below 60% capacity. Note that the cyan curves indicate daily admissions rather than 7-d averages, and thus changes (indicated by horizontal gray regions) are triggered a few days after the daily values cross a threshold. (A and B) The lockdown continues through September 2021, resulting in a 90% reduction in transmission, along with vigilant cocooning of vulnerable populations (95% effective), and school closures. (C and D) The lockdown is relaxed on May 1, 2020. Thereafter, transmission is reduced by 40%, schools open in mid-August 2020, and 95% effective cocooning of vulnerable populations is maintained through September 2021. Hospitalizations are expected to grossly overrun capacity. (E and F) Adaptive lockdowns are triggered when hospital admissions cross optimized thresholds, assuming 95% effective cocooning of vulnerable populations. The thresholds minimize the expected days of lockdown while ensuring hospital capacity is not exceeded with high probability. (G and H) Adaptive lockdowns are triggered when effectiveness of cocooning drops to 80%. Even under an optimized solution, expected deaths and days in lockdown both more than double, relative to cocooning at 95%. In all graphs, solid curves correspond to the point forecast, and shaded regions give 90% prediction intervals based on 300 stochastic simulations.
Projected days of lockdown and COVID-19 mortality under the optimized strategies with 95% and 80% effective cocooning of vulnerable populations
| Scenario | Cocooning at 95% | Cocooning at 80% |
| Days of lockdown | ||
| Mean | 135 | 346 |
| Median | 135 | 347 |
| 5 to 95% PI | (126 to 141) | (333 to 360) |
| Cumulative deaths by | ||
| September 30, 2021 | ||
| Mean | 2,929 | 6,527 |
| Median | 2,646 | 6,532 |
| 5 to 95% PI | (2,837 to 3,026) | (6,338 to 6,690) |
The second and third columns correspond to Fig. 1 and Fig. 1 , respectively. Each 90% prediction interval (PI) (i.e., from 5 to 95%) shown in the table and in Fig. 1 is based on 300 simulations.
Probabilities of exceeding hospital capacity under the optimized strategies with 95% and 80% effective cocooning of vulnerable populations
| Probability of exceeding percent of hospital capacity | ||
| Hospital capacity | Cocooning at 95% | Cocooning at 80% |
| 60% | 1.000 | 1.000 |
| 70% | 0.997 | 1.000 |
| 80% | 0.803 | 0.973 |
| 90% | 0.020 | 0.197 |
| 100% | 0.000 | 0.007 |
The second and third columns correspond to Fig. 1 and Fig. 1 , respectively. Note that Fig. 1 shows 90% prediction intervals (PIs), 5%-95%, for hospitalizations based on 300 simulations, and the last row of the table includes more extreme events.
COVID-19 mortality under the optimized strategies with 95% and 80% effective cocooning of vulnerable populations
| Percent deaths | |||
| Risk group | Age group | Cocooning at 95% | Cocooning at 80% |
| Low risk | |||
| 0 y to 4 y | 0.03 | 0.02 | |
| 5 y to 17 y | 0.20 | 0.08 | |
| 18 y to 49 y | 9.01 | 3.60 | |
| 50 y to 64 y | 18.23 | 6.97 | |
| 65 y+ | 4.43 | 6.12 | |
| High risk | |||
| 0 y to 4 y | 0.00 | 0.02 | |
| 5 y to 17 y | 0.10 | 0.09 | |
| 18 y to 49 y | 6.04 | 5.82 | |
| 50 y to 64 y | 26.86 | 28.32 | |
| 65 y+ | 35.06 | 48.95 | |
The third and fourth columns correspond to Fig. 1 and Fig. 1 , respectively.