Schools across the country are making difficult decisions about whether and how to implement Covid-19 testing. This impact estimator, designed by Mathematica and The Rockefeller Foundation, is designed to help schools and public health agencies make these decisions. The results shown were produced by an agent-based model (ABM) created to assess the potential value of routine testing in K-12 schools, above and beyond other mitigation strategies.
Answer a few questions and then select different routine testing strategies to compare how well they each perform relative to one another and a "baseline" in which a school offers only diagnostic testing and masking.*
Update 11/8/2021: Underlying ABM updated to assume all SARS-CoV-2 virus in the model is of the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant given its widespread prevalence. Additional questions were added to present results based on varying vaccination rates among (1) students and (2) teachers and staff. An additional question was added to present results with varying student opt-in rates to routine testing. All teachers and staff are assumed to comply with routine testing.
Insights
- Higher student opt-in rates lead to higher predicted impacts of routine testing at all community incidence rates.
- Vaccination rates of the school population are a key consideration when considering a testing strategy. Routine testing has a higher impact on within-school transmission the lower the school population’s vaccination rate.
For further inquiries about the use of this impact estimator, please reach out to Divya Vohra (dvohra@mathematica-mpr.com) and John Hotchkiss (jhotchkiss@mathematica-mpr.com).
- Routine testing is of individuals that have not already been identified as symptomatic or exposed to identify infected people sooner and reduce transmission. Diagnostic testing refers to testing for people who have symptoms and/or a history of close contact with an infected individual.
Get started by answering a few questions.
Some combinations of parameters will not show results because the model does not allow for accurate estimates within these combinations. Under those combinations of parameters, routine testing may not provide significant benefit above and beyond diagnostic testing and masking.
Note that as selections are made below, subsequent selection options will be filtered such that only one option may be available.