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As Covid-19 infections soar across the U.S., some states are tightening restrictions and reinstituting quarantine measures to slow the virus spread. A model developed by MIT researchers shows a direct link between the number of people who become infected and how effectively a state maintains its quarantine measures.
The researchers described their model in a paper published in
Cell Patterns in November, showing that the system could recapitulate the effects that quarantine measures had on viral spread in countries around the world. In their next study, recently posted to the preprint server medRxiv, they drilled into data from the United States last spring and summer. That earlier surge in infections, they found, was strongly related to a drop in quarantine strength a measure the team defines as the ability to keep infected individuals from infecting others.