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Infect Dis Model. 2021 Dec 28; doi: 10.1016/j.idm.2021.12.006. Epub 2021 Dec 28.

Effect of vaccination, border testing, and quarantine requirements on the risk of COVID-19 in New Zealand: A modelling study.

Infectious Disease Modelling

Nicholas Steyn, Audrey Lustig, Shaun C Hendy, Rachelle N Binny, Michael J Plank

Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
  2. Te P?naha Matatini, Centre of Research Excellence in Complex Systems, New Zealand.
  3. Manaaki Whenua, Lincoln, New Zealand.
  4. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

PMID: 34977439 PMCID: PMC8712670 DOI: 10.1016/j.idm.2021.12.006

Abstract

We couple a simple model of quarantine and testing strategies for international travellers with a model for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a partly vaccinated population. We use this model to estimate the risk of an infectious traveller causing a community outbreak under various border control strategies and different levels of vaccine coverage in the population. Results are calculated from N = 100,000 independent realisations of the stochastic model. We find that strategies that rely on home isolation are significantly higher risk than the current mandatory 14-day stay in government-managed isolation. Nevertheless, combinations of testing and home isolation can still reduce the risk of a community outbreak to around one outbreak per 100 infected travellers. We also find that, under some circumstances, using daily lateral flow tests or a combination of lateral flow tests and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests can reduce risk to a comparable or lower level than using PCR tests alone. Combined with controls on the number of travellers from countries with high prevalence of COVID-19, our results allow different options for managing the risk of COVID-19 at the border to be compared. This can be used to inform strategies for relaxing border controls in a phased way, while limiting the risk of community outbreaks as vaccine coverage increases.

© 2021 The Authors.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: This research was funded by a grant from the New Zealand Departme

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