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Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises
To ensure the safe operation of schools, workplaces, nursing homes, and other businesses during COVID-19 pandemic there is an urgent need to develop cost-effective public health strategies. Here we focus on the cruise industry which was hit early by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 40 cruise sh...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8322151/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34326439 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95032-4 |
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author | Chowell, Gerardo Dahal, Sushma Bono, Raquel Mizumoto, Kenji |
author_facet | Chowell, Gerardo Dahal, Sushma Bono, Raquel Mizumoto, Kenji |
author_sort | Chowell, Gerardo |
collection | PubMed |
description | To ensure the safe operation of schools, workplaces, nursing homes, and other businesses during COVID-19 pandemic there is an urgent need to develop cost-effective public health strategies. Here we focus on the cruise industry which was hit early by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 40 cruise ships reporting COVID-19 infections. We apply mathematical modeling to assess the impact of testing strategies together with social distancing protocols on the spread of the novel coronavirus during ocean cruises using an individual-level stochastic model of the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. We model the contact network, the potential importation of cases arising during shore excursions, the temporal course of infectivity at the individual level, the effects of social distancing strategies, different testing scenarios characterized by the test’s sensitivity profile, and testing frequency. Our findings indicate that PCR testing at embarkation and daily testing of all individuals aboard, together with increased social distancing and other public health measures, should allow for rapid detection and isolation of COVID-19 infections and dramatically reducing the probability of onboard COVID-19 community spread. In contrast, relying only on PCR testing at embarkation would not be sufficient to avert outbreaks, even when implementing substantial levels of social distancing measures. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8322151 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83221512021-07-30 Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises Chowell, Gerardo Dahal, Sushma Bono, Raquel Mizumoto, Kenji Sci Rep Article To ensure the safe operation of schools, workplaces, nursing homes, and other businesses during COVID-19 pandemic there is an urgent need to develop cost-effective public health strategies. Here we focus on the cruise industry which was hit early by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 40 cruise ships reporting COVID-19 infections. We apply mathematical modeling to assess the impact of testing strategies together with social distancing protocols on the spread of the novel coronavirus during ocean cruises using an individual-level stochastic model of the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. We model the contact network, the potential importation of cases arising during shore excursions, the temporal course of infectivity at the individual level, the effects of social distancing strategies, different testing scenarios characterized by the test’s sensitivity profile, and testing frequency. Our findings indicate that PCR testing at embarkation and daily testing of all individuals aboard, together with increased social distancing and other public health measures, should allow for rapid detection and isolation of COVID-19 infections and dramatically reducing the probability of onboard COVID-19 community spread. In contrast, relying only on PCR testing at embarkation would not be sufficient to avert outbreaks, even when implementing substantial levels of social distancing measures. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8322151/ /pubmed/34326439 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95032-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Chowell, Gerardo Dahal, Sushma Bono, Raquel Mizumoto, Kenji Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
title | Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
title_full | Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
title_fullStr | Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
title_full_unstemmed | Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
title_short | Harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert COVID-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
title_sort | harnessing testing strategies and public health measures to avert covid-19 outbreaks during ocean cruises |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8322151/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34326439 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95032-4 |
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