Contact Tracing with Group Testing, Robustness.

I build a stochastic epidemiological model with production and endogenous responses to the epidemic to compare different testing policies to isolate and quarantine the infectious: voluntary tests, random screenings and contact tracing. To increase the number of screened individuals at given testing capacity, I also allow for the use of group testing. Contact tracing with group testing is the best testing policy unless in case of: very contagious diseases, socially dense countries, high test costs and limited testing capacity. The gains include a lower mortality, a smaller output loss, and lower peaks of infections and hospitalizations. I show that sophisticated tracing technologies are not needed to achieve these gains.

本文构建了一个包含生产环节与疫情内生响应的随机流行病学模型，用于对比三类用于感染者隔离与检疫的检测策略：自愿检测、随机筛查以及接触者追踪。为在既定检测能力下提升受检个体数量，本文同时引入混检（group testing）方案。采用混检的接触者追踪策略为最优检测方案，除非满足以下情形：高传染性疾病、人口稠密的国家、检测成本高昂以及检测能力受限。该策略的收益体现为更低的死亡率、更小的产出损失，以及感染峰值与住院峰值的降低。本文研究表明，无需借助复杂的接触者追踪技术即可实现上述收益。