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Precaution, Social Distancing and Tests in a Model of Epidemic Disease

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  • Francesc Obiols-Homs

Abstract

I develop an extension of a canonical epidemiology model in which the policy in place determines the probability of transmission of an epidemic disease. I use the model to evaluate the effects of isolating symptomatic individuals, of increasing social distancing and of tests of different quality: a poor quality test that can only discriminate between healthy and infected individuals (such as polymerase chain reaction -PCR- or Rapid Diagnostic Test), and a high quality test that is able to discriminate between immune and vulnerable healthy, and infected individuals (such as a serology test like Neutralization Assay). I find that isolating symptomatic individuals has a large effect at delaying and reducing the pick of infections. The combination of this policy with the poor quality test represents only a negligible improvement, whereas with the high quality test there is an additional delaying and reduction in the pick of infections. Social distancing alone cannot achieve similar effects without incurring in enormous output losses. I explore the combined effect of social distancing at early stages of the epidemic with a following period of tests and find that the best outcome is obtained with a light reduction of human interaction for about three months together with a subsequent test of the population over 40 days.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesc Obiols-Homs, 2020. "Precaution, Social Distancing and Tests in a Model of Epidemic Disease," Working Papers 1173, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:1173
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Andrew Atkeson, 2020. "What Will be the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in the US? Rough Estimates of Disease Scenarios," Staff Report 595, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    2. David Berger & Kyle Herkenhoff & Chengdai Huang & Simon Mongey, 2022. "Testing and Reopening in an SEIR Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 1-21, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Mohammad Ghaderi, 2020. "Public Health Interventions in the Face of Pandemics: Network Structure, Social Distancing, and Heterogeneity," Working Papers 1193, Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Anna Houstecka & Dongya Koh & Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis, 2020. "Contagion at Work," Working Papers 1225, Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Mohammad Ghaderi, 2020. "Public health interventions in the face of pandemics: network structure, social distancing, and heterogeneity," Economics Working Papers 1732, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • E1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
    • H12 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Crisis Management
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

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