Controlling the spread of COVID-19 on college campuses
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: 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.
DOI: 10.3934/mbe.2021030
Institution: Duke University
Language: English
Subfield: Modeling and Simulation
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,000
OpenAlex ID: W3049385934