An Engineering Model of the COVID-19 Trajectory to Predict Success of Isolation Initiatives

Decision Date: 15/7/2020

Handling Editor: Dan Osborn

The Handling Editor requested revisions; the article has been returned to the authors to make this revision.

Decision Date: 01/05/2020

Handling Editor: Dan Osborn

This article is a preprint article and has not been peer-reviewed. It is under consideration following submission to UCL Open: Environment Preprint for open peer review.

There has been one review of this paper so far and a discussion amongst editorial board which agreed with the one reviewer. For the paper to proceed further the following is required.

1. The paper must make reference to the considerable body of work in public health modelling of viral and other infectious diseases and explain why the approach laid out in the paper has its merits. There is ample material for this if the origin of the model used are properly considered and referenced.
2. Any equivalence of terms between the widely sued public health models and this model need to be explicitly stated and compared. Without such inter-comparison this model's merits may not be appreciated by a wider audience.
3. Diagrams need to be improved along the lines indicated by the non-UCL external reviewer.
4. There is now a lot of additional data and information on lockdown procedures in many parts of the world and the paper should use this information to test the validity of the model proposed.
5. The relevance of the model to people's environment in either urban or rural areas should be made a little more clear.

Once modified the manuscript can be reconsidered.

on Behalf of Prof. Dan Osborn, Editor-in-Chief