Optimizing COVID-19 testing strategies on college campuses: Evaluation of the health and economic costs

Abstract

Colleges and universities in the US struggled to provide safe in-person education throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing coupled with isolation is a nimble intervention strategy that can be tailored to mitigate the changing health and economic risks associated with SARS-CoV-2. We developed a decision-support tool to aid in the design of university-based screening strategies using a mathematical model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Applying this framework to a large public university reopening in the fall of 2021 with a 60% student vaccination rate, we find that the optimal strategy, in terms of health and economic costs, is twice weekly antigen testing of all students. This strategy provides a 95% guarantee that, throughout the fall semester, case counts would not exceed twice the CDC’s original high transmission threshold of 100 cases per 100k persons over 7 days. As the virus and our medical armament continue to evolve, testing will remain a flexible tool for managing risks and keeping campuses open. We have implemented this model as an online tool to facilitate the design of testing strategies that adjust for COVID-19 conditions as well as campus-specific populations, resources, and priorities.