COVID-19 prevention and control measures and infection risks in a boarding school

Boarding school is one of the places where people usually live in densely crowed conditions. In order to control the risk of COVID-19 epidemic in boarding schools, five levels of practicable pandemic prevention measures and their effects on infection risks in five typical campus living scenes, including going to washroom, going out, going to class, having meal, and returning to dormitory were proposed, and the susceptible-infective (SI) model based on statistics and probability hypotheses was developed. Then the SARS-CoV-2 infection rates among students in 14 days were simulated in two typical apartment types: four-person dormitory with two public washrooms on each floor (apartment A) and six-person dormitory with a private washroom (apartment B). Results show that for apartment A, once there was an infected person, the epidemic spread rapidly in the whole building even under the most stringent prevention and control measures (level Ⅴ). While for apartment B, when the most stringent prevention and control measures (level Ⅴ) were taken, the epidemic could be controlled within the range of less than 10 people in two weeks. In addition, full vaccination would significantly inhibit the infection rate, and the number of washrooms would no longer be a significant factor. Even if no prevention and control measures were taken, the number of infected people would decrease significantly, and the number of persons in one dormitory became the main factor affecting the spread of the virus. The research results can provide information support for campus epidemic prevention and control. Copyright ©2022 Journal of Harbin Institute of Technology.All rights reserved.