The impact of phased university reopenings on mitigating the spread of COVID-19: a modeling study

BMC Public Health

Table 2 Outcome metrics based on modeling study under each strategy across varying disease reproductive numbers

Phased reopening	Pre-arrival testing	Peak outbreak: size (days to peak)
		R_t = 1.5	R_t = 2.5	R_t = 3.5	R_t = 3.5, 2.5, 1.5 ^a
No	No	948 (42 days)	2014 (28 days)	2660 (22 days)	2660 (22 days)
No	Yes	760 (82 days)	1837 (46 days)	2495 (34 days)	2422 (33 days)
Yes	Yes	738 (115 days)	1430 (73 days)	1476 (47 days) ^b	1111 (49 days) ^b
		Total infections
		R_t = 1.5	R_t = 2.5	R_t = 3.5	R_t = 3.5, 2.5, 1.5 ^a
No	No	4974	6192	6438	6394
No	Yes	4562	6151	6425	6261
Yes	Yes	3558	6010	6100	4856
		Beds needed for isolation of detected individuals: n_beds (%) ^c
		R_t = 1.5	R_t = 2.5	R_t = 3.5	R_t = 3.5, 2.5, 1.5 ^a
No	No	336 (4.5%)	704 (9.4%)	916 (12.2%)	916 (12.2%)
No	Yes	270 (3.6%)	643 (8.6%)	863 (11.5%)	834 (11.1%)
Yes	Yes	263 (3.5%)	513 (6.8%)	415 (5.5%)	397 (5.3%)

Outcome metrics are peak outbreak size (and days to peak outbreak size), total infections, and isolation beds capacity for detected students throughout the semester under three interventions: No phased reopening or pre-arrival testing, pre-arrival testing only, phased re-opening with pre-arrival testing. The size of the on-campus student population is N = 7500
^a Improving R_t: R₀ = 3.5, R₁ = 2.5, and R_t = 1.5 for months t ≥ 2
^b Peak outbreak occurred with 2/3’s of student population on campus (i.e, 5000 students)^c Proportion of isolation beds needed (n_beds) relative to on-campus student population (N)

ISSN: 1471-2458