Number needed to isolate – a new population health metric to quantify transmission reductions from isolation interventions for infectious diseases.

Number needed to isolate – a new population health metric to quantify transmission reductions from isolation interventions for infectious diseases.

Publication date: Dec 23, 2024

We have previously developed and reported on a procedure for estimating the purported benefits of immunity mandates using a novel variant of the number needed to treat (NNT) which we called the number needed to isolate (NNI). Here we demonstrate its broader properties as a useful population health metric. The NNI is analogous to the number needed to treat (NNT = 1/ARR), except the absolute risk reduction (ARR) is the absolute transmission risk in a specific population. The NNI is the number of susceptible hosts in a population who need to be isolated to prevent one transmission event from them. The properties and utility of the NNI were modeled using simulated data and its model predictions were validated using real world data. The properties of the NNI are described for three categories of data from a previous study on transmissibility of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): (1) in different settings, (2) after a specific exposure and (3) depending on symptomaticity status of susceptible hosts. We provide a demonstration of the utility of the NNI as a valuable population health metric to quantify the transmission reductions from isolation interventions.

Concepts Keywords
Coronavirus Communicable Disease Control
Diseases Communicable Diseases
Hosts COVID-19
Metr Humans
Valuable Infectious disease
Isolation
Population Health
Reproduction number
SARS-CoV-2
SARS-CoV-2
Transmission

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH infectious diseases
disease MESH COVID-19
pathway REACTOME Infectious disease
disease IDO infectious disease
pathway REACTOME Reproduction

Original Article

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