Research and analysis

Effectiveness of isolation, testing, contact tracing and physical distancing on reducing transmission of COVID-19 in different settings: Draft for SPI-M, 20 April 2020

Paper prepared by academics for the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M).

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Effectiveness of isolation, testing, contact tracing and physical distancing on reducing transmission of Covid-19 in different settings: Draft for SPI-M - 20 April 2020

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Paper prepared by academics on the effectiveness of isolation, testing, contact tracing and physical distancing on reducing transmission of COVID-19 in different settings. It was considered at SAGE 27 on 21 April 2020.

This is 1 of 2 modelling papers on contact tracing informing the SPI-M: Consensus statement on COVID-19 as published under SAGE 27 and should be read in that context alongside the other documents for SAGE 27. The SPI-M-O consensus view summarises the main insights across the available evidence and modelling at the time.

These results should not be interpreted as a forecast, but rather illustrative outputs under a set of assumptions to inform wider discussion. These modelling outputs are subject to uncertainty given the evidence available at the time, and dependent on the assumptions made.

It should be viewed in context: the paper was the best assessment of the evidence at the time of writing. The picture is developing rapidly and, as new evidence or data emerges, SAGE updates its advice accordingly.

Therefore, some of the information in this paper may have been superseded and the author’s opinion or conclusion may since have developed.

You can see a preprint of the paper.

These documents are released as pre-print publications that have provided the government with rapid evidence during an emergency. These documents have not been peer-reviewed and there is no restriction on authors submitting and publishing this evidence in peer-reviewed journals.

Updates to this page

Published 19 June 2020

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