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Threshold Analyses On Combinations Of Testing, Population Size, And Vaccine Coverage For Covid-19 Control In A University Setting, Xinmeng Zhao, Hanisha Tatapudi, George Corey, Chaitra Gopalappa

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publication Series

We simulated epidemic projections of a potential COVID-19 outbreak in a residential university population in the United States under varying combinations of asymptomatic tests (5% to 33% per day), transmission rates (2.5% to 14%), and contact rates (1 to 25), to identify the contact rate threshold that, if exceeded, would lead to exponential growth in infections. Using this, we extracted contact rate thresholds among non-essential workers, population size thresholds in the absence of vaccines, and vaccine coverage thresholds. We further stream-lined our analyses to transmission rates of 5 to 8%, to correspond to the reported levels of face-mask-use/physical-distancing during the …