Harvard Medical School researchers found that a combination of wearing masks and practicing social distancing can reduce student and faculty Covid-19 infections on college campuses by roughly 87 percent, according to a peer-reviewed study published last week.
The study, which was published on Dec. 21 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, used a dynamic microsimulation model to project the clinical and economic outcomes of different intervention strategies over the course of one semester, or 105 days.
Researchers measured outcomes by projected infections per 5,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 faculty in addition to days in isolation, test counts, test costs, costs per infection prevented, and cost per quality-adjusted life year, which incorporates health-related quality of life.