Fig. 2: SARS-CoV-2 epidemic curves and viral load curves.

a SARS-CoV-2 epidemic curves (upper panel). The black, purple, and pink curves are the daily incidence (as a proportion of the total population) of new infections, asymptomatic infections, and symptomatic infections, respectively. The vertical red, yellow, and blue dashed lines are the timings of screening initiation for the growth, peak, and decline phases of the epidemic, respectively. Simulated SARS-CoV-2 viral dynamics of asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals in the school or workplace over time (lower panel). The blue, red, and green lines are latent, infectious, and non-infectious stages as defined in Fig.1a. Note that the green line is discontinued on the right end when the viral load drops below a detection limit of 10² copies/mL. b Estimated viral load curves from the SARS-CoV-2 viral dynamics model. The solid lines are drawn using the best-fit population parameters (purple: asymptomatic, pink: symptomatic). The shaded regions correspond to 95% predictive intervals created using a bootstrap approach. c. Cumulative proportion of identified SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals during the screening programs (Schedules 0 to 5) under our baseline setting (\({R}_{e}=2.0\),\(\,p=0.7\)). We used baseline values for screening programs (i.e., low sensitivity tests [\(2.0\times {10}^{6}\) copies/mL], screening initiation at peak phase, and 4 antigen tests for each person). The shaded regions are 95% confidence intervals using a bootstrap approach.