Controlling the spread of COVID-19 on college campuses.

Journal Article (Journal Article)

This research was done during the DOMath program at Duke University from May 18 to July 10, 2020. At the time, Duke and other universities across the country were wrestling with the question of how to safely welcome students back to campus in the Fall. Because of this, our project focused on using mathematical models to evaluate strategies to suppress the spread of the virus on campus, specifically in dorms and in classrooms. For dorms, we show that giving students single rooms rather than double rooms can substantially reduce virus spread. For classrooms, we show that moving classes with size above some cutoff online can make the basic reproduction number $ R_0 < 1 $, preventing a wide spread epidemic. The cutoff will depend on the contagiousness of the disease in classrooms.

Full Text

Duke Authors

Cited Authors

  • Borowiak, M; Ning, F; Pei, J; Zhao, S; Tung, H-R; Durrett, R

Published Date

  • December 2020

Published In

Volume / Issue

  • 18 / 1

Start / End Page

  • 551 - 563

PubMed ID

  • 33525107

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1551-0018

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1547-1063

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.3934/mbe.2021030

Language

  • eng