Estimating the risk reduction of isolation on COVID-19 non-household transmission and severe/critical illness in non-immune individuals: September to November 2021
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In the fall 2021, immunity mandates/passports for COVID-19 started to be discussed and implemented globally. In addition to increasing vaccination levels, these interventions isolate non-immune individuals from various settings to reduce non-household transmission and severe/critical illness. This is based on the hypothesis that the non-immune are at high absolute risk of these outcomes. However, these absolute risks were not quantified in the literature such that the absolute risk reductions of isolation on these outcomes remain unknown. This study estimated these absolute risks from September to November 2021 prior to the emergence of Omicron (B.1.1.529) using known data on the risk of infection, transmission in non-household settings, and age-stratified severe/critical illness in non-immune individuals for the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant, focusing on the European Union, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and Israel. This allowed us to quantify the absolute risk reductions of isolation on (1) non-household transmission from the non-immune and (2) severe/critical illness amongst the non-immune in these regions during this period. We observed that on any given day the absolute risk reductions of isolation were typically small for transmission in most types of non-household settings and severe/critical illness in most age-groups, especially those aged <40. During a wave or sustained higher infection risks, the risk reductions were modest only for transmission in intimate social gatherings and severe/critical illness in adults aged ≥50-60. The limitations of this study and the implications for the expected benefits of isolating non-immune individuals on reducing these outcomes are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".