Group testing as a strategy for COVID-19 epidemiological monitoring and community surveillance
Fig 3
(A) Model 1 for the evolution of the viral load post-infection. (B) Modelled distribution in the infection age at the moment of the test for (red) symptomatic individuals as a Gamma function; (blue-cyan) fully asymptomatic (i.e. throughout the infection) individuals either as (blue) a constant if the new infections rate is a constant with time or (cyan) as an exponential if the rate of new infections decays exponentially with time (characteristic decay time τ = 10 days). (C) In the Model 1 context, the distribution of the viral load in asymptomatic individuals is relatively uniform. (D) Model 2 for the evolution of the viral load post-infection distinguishing between symptomatic and asymptomatic (combining [58] and [59]). Parameters estimate are provided in Table H in S1 Text. (E) In the model 2 context, the distribution of the viral load in asymptomatic individuals shows 2 peaks at high and low viral loads. (F) The distribution of the viral load in symptomatic individuals is less bimodal than the observed asymptomatic distribution.