Impact of pre-event testing and quarantine on reducing the risk of COVID-19 epidemic rebound: a modelling study.

BACKGROUND: With the evolving growth of the COVID-19 epidemic, travel restriction policies would need to be adjusted accordingly. Prohibition of mass event may be relaxed for social and economic benefits when virus transmission stops but could bear the risk of epidemic rebound. Against the background of the varied SARS-CoV-2 prevalence internationally, we modelled the potential impacts of pre-event interventions on epidemic risk of holding a mass event when COVID-19 is under control. METHODS: We developed a mathematical model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Guangdong Province, China, where local virus transmission ceased to occur. A large-scale international trade fair was assumed to be held, with influx of people from overseas and rest of China over a short period of time, who participated for 2-week. Scenarios of pre-event intervention (none, quarantine arrangement and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for participants) were compared. The influence of contact pattern, SARS-CoV-2 prevalence outside the province and China, and testing coverage were examined in sensitivity analyses. RESULTS: In basecase scenario (no event), the epidemic has been under control since March 2020. The event would lead to the detection of 1% more confirmed cases by 31 July when community contact rate increases to pre-epidemic level. In event scenario without additional interventions, there would be 599 (93%) more new infections comparing with basecase scenario. To avert new infections, quarantining all participants before the event would be the most effective strategy, followed by quarantining all overseas participants and testing all other participants, and testing all participants before the event and on day 7. However, testing strategy is likely to be affected by the SARS-CoV-2 prevalence outside the event province. CONCLUSIONS: Pre-event interventions are effective for reducing the risk of epidemic rebound caused by an international large-scale event. Universal testing for participants is likely to be an effective and feasible intervention.

GIS Based emergency management framework for large-scale events: A case study of the torch relay activity

Due to the high popular concentration of large-scale events, once an emergency (like a stampede) occurs, it will often cause severe casualties. Moreover, since the widespread of the COVID-19, the prevention of the novel coronavirus should also be considered during mass gatherings. How to reduce the probability and potential consequence of emergencies is of great significance. This research designs an emergency management framework using ArcGIS-based geographic information technology for large-scale events. To verify the effectiveness of our framework, we take the Winter Olympic torch relay in university as an example. The paper is mainly divided into two parts, emergency resource allocation and the emergency prevention model. The former part focuses on the site selection of emergency sentries and emergency hospitals during the torch relay. In the latter part, an emergency prevention model is designed for two significant emergencies: stampede and epidemic. © 2021 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM. All rights reserved.