Optimizing testing for COVID-19 in India
Fig 8
Effects of PCR test delays and quarantining homes.
Testing is started when 20% of the population has recovered. (A) No PCR delay. Quarantining the home locations of the individuals in addition to isolating them at home is seen to have a small but not-insignificant benefit when there is no test delay. (B) 2 day PCR delay. When the PCR delay is increased to 2 days, the relative benefit of having PCR tests in the mixture is seen to disappear. (C) 5 day PCR delay. As the delay is further increased, the trend becomes clear: using even weak point-of-care RAT tests would be preferable to PCR tests with high delays. Additionally, when there are PCR delays, the benefit of increased testing is greatly diminished. In this case, however, the improvement that comes from quarantining of homes is much more significant at higher testing rates. As before, the plots were obtained by averaging over 100 simulation runs of 200 days each.