eprintid: 10123654 rev_number: 16 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/12/36/54 datestamp: 2021-03-10 18:37:04 lastmod: 2021-12-05 00:31:02 status_changed: 2021-03-10 18:37:04 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Sturniolo, S creators_name: Waites, W creators_name: Colbourn, T creators_name: Manheim, D creators_name: Panovska-Griffiths, J title: Testing, tracing and isolation in compartmental models ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: D01 note: © 2021 Sturniolo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. abstract: Existing compartmental mathematical modelling methods for epidemics, such as SEIR models, cannot accurately represent effects of contact tracing. This makes them inappropriate for evaluating testing and contact tracing strategies to contain an outbreak. An alternative used in practice is the application of agent- or individual-based models (ABM). However ABMs are complex, less well-understood and much more computationally expensive. This paper presents a new method for accurately including the effects of Testing, contact-Tracing and Isolation (TTI) strategies in standard compartmental models. We derive our method using a careful probabilistic argument to show how contact tracing at the individual level is reflected in aggregate on the population level. We show that the resultant SEIR-TTI model accurately approximates the behaviour of a mechanistic agent-based model at far less computational cost. The computational efficiency is such that it can be easily and cheaply used for exploratory modelling to quantify the required levels of testing and tracing, alone and with other interventions, to assist adaptive planning for managing disease outbreaks. date: 2021-03 date_type: published official_url: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008633 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1852167 doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008633 pii: PCOMPBIOL-D-20-00860 lyricists_name: Colbourn, Timothy lyricists_name: Panovska-Griffiths, Jasmina lyricists_id: TECOL04 lyricists_id: JPANO44 actors_name: Flynn, Bernadette actors_id: BFFLY94 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: PLoS Computational Biology volume: 17 number: 3 article_number: e1008633 event_location: United States issn: 1553-7358 citation: Sturniolo, S; Waites, W; Colbourn, T; Manheim, D; Panovska-Griffiths, J; (2021) Testing, tracing and isolation in compartmental models. PLoS Computational Biology , 17 (3) , Article e1008633. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008633 <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008633>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10123654/1/journal.pcbi.1008633.pdf