Coming out of lockdown too soon could be catastrophic and lead to an explosion of new coronavirus cases according to a study modelling the spread of the virus.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a model showing the spread of the deadly virus using publicly available data.
The authors say that any immediate or near-term relaxation of quarantine measures already in place would lead to an ‘exponential explosion’ in COVID-19 cases.
It comes as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab declared that the UK coronavirus lockdown will stay for at least another three weeks.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a model showing the spread of the deadly virus using publicly available data from around the world
The model developed by the MIT team has proved accurate when tested against data from late January to early March – it anticipated the rate of spreading up to April 1 and is capable of predicting spread going forward.
This is the first time a model has been built based purely on COVID-19 data – all previously models used SARS and MERS information to chart the outbreak.
Most models predict the spread of disease by looking at people susceptible, exposed, infected and recovered but this model captures the number of infected individual still in quarantine and unable to infect others.
This allows them to go beyond existing models and create a much more accurate system to predict the future impact of the virus if lockdowns are ended early.
They predict COVID-19 infections will reach a plateau in the US and Italy next week but say this isn’t a reason to relax lockdown measures already in place.
The study authors say: ‘Relaxing quarantine measures too soon, we have predicted that the consequences would be far more catastrophic.’
‘Our model is the first which uses data from the coronavirus itself and integrates two fields: machine learning and standard epidemiology,’ explains Raj Dandekar, a PhD candidate studying civil and environmental engineering.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended New York’s coronavirus lockdown by two weeks until May 15.
Cuomo said on Thursday that while the rate of hospitalizations in New York is decreasing, it was still unclear how many people have actually been infected with COVID-19.
He said the unknown tally of infections is what is stopping him from reopening the economy because if people who don’t know they are infected return to work, they risk infecting countless others and wiping out all the progress that has been made.
In the UK Foreign Secretary Raab says lockdown measures are starting to pay off in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the UK, but it’s too early to end them.
He said the infection rate is not as low as it needs to be to end lockdown.
Doing so now ‘would threaten a second peak of the virus and substantially increase the number of deaths’. Adding it would threaten as second peak – something predicted as part of the MIT model.
The model revealed that that in places like South Korea, where there was immediate government intervention in implementing strong quarantine measures, the virus spread plateaued more quickly.
In contrast, places like the US and Italy where government interventions were slower the ‘effective reproduction number’ of COVID-19 were higher than one meaning the virus has continued to spread exponentially.
‘Our model shows that quarantine restrictions are successful in getting the effective reproduction number from larger than one to smaller than one,’ says Professor George Barbastathis.
‘That corresponds to the point where we can flatten the curve and start seeing fewer infections.’
President Donald Trump’s social distancing guidelines are set to expire on April 30 and he has cited May 1 as a target for reopening the country.
On Wednesday, Trump said he was prepared to announce new guidelines allowing some states to quickly ease up on social distancing even as business leaders told him they need more coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment before people can safely go back to work.
They predict COVID-19 infections will reach a plateau in the US and Italy next week but say this isn’t a reason to relax lockdown measures already in place
Using this model, the team was able to draw a direct correlation between quarantine measures and a reduction in the effective reproduction number of the virus.
Basically – quarantine works to slow the spread of coronavirus.
‘The neural network is learning what we are calling the ‘quarantine control strength function,’ explains Dandekar.
According to Barbastathis, Singapore is a prime case study for the dangers that could stem from relaxing quarantine measures too quickly.
While the team didn’t study Singapore’s COVID-19 cases in their research, ‘the second wave of infection this country is currently experiencing reflects their model’s finding about the correlation between quarantine measures and infection rate.’
“If the US were to follow the same policy of relaxing quarantine measures too soon, we have predicted that the consequences would be far more catastrophic,” Barbastathis adds.
The team plans to share the model with other researchers to help develop successful quarantine strategies to slow the rate of infection.
The research has not been peer reviewed but is availble on the preprint server medRxiv.