Fig. 4: The variable-period guideline.
The proportion of patients who are still infectious when they end isolation (a leaking risk), the expected number of secondary cases produced by a single case (b effective reproduction number, Re), and the mean length of redundant isolation after they lose infectiousness (c excess isolation burden) using Ct = 25 (106.11 copies/mL) as the infectiousness threshold. The length of isolation was varied stepwise for those with and without vaccination independently. The upper-right regions separated by red and yellow lines correspond to the leaking risk below a certain level (i.e., 5%, 10%, 20%) and effective reproduction number below 1, respectively. Note that Re considers the entire area under the viral load curve and is not bounded by a viral load threshold. Each symbol corresponds to the combination of the isolation lengths to minimize the excess isolation burden in the region when each condition is met.
