The Optimise Study: Optimising Isolation, Quarantine and Distancing for COVID-19

The Optimise Study is a research project led by Burnet Institute and Doherty Institute that aims to find out how Victorians are experiencing COVID-19 and responding to the measures introduced to stop the spread of the virus.

Objective

The information gathered in this research project will help guide Victoria’s approach to COVID-19, both to prevent new infections and to reduce the health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19 restriction and prevention measures. This network image is an example of close contact between people from the Optimise Project which covers from the beginning of the project in September 2020 until September 2021. The network image does not show all people involved in the Optimise Project, but instead focuses on only some of the connections between people.

The blue dots are people in the Optimise Project, and are participants or other people that participants have contact with. The grey lines represent the close contact between people. You can see that between some people (i.e., some blue dots) there are many lines between people who interact a lot with one another. Between other people, there is only one connection between people indicating only one interaction between those people. And of course, there are no lines between some people, meaning they do not have contact with one another at all.

You can see that some people cluster together in groups, while others only have regular contact with one other person. It is natural for people to differ in how many others they connect with. The Optimise Study is a research project led by Burnet Institute and Doherty Institute, that aims to find out how Victorians are experiencing COVID-19 and responding to the measures introduced to stop the spread of the virus.

Approach

Collect strategic information

This includes:

• understanding compliance and adherence with social isolation, quarantine and physical distancing
• determining key factors affecting cooperation with social and physical distancing measures, including health, social, structural and economic factors
• assessing unintended consequences of isolation and distancing measures on key vulnerable groups and among the general population
• identifying vulnerable populations for whom sustaining self-isolation is more difficult or who are disproportionately affected
• measuring social contacts and mixing patterns to inform transmission modelling and assess if key groups or individuals are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection.

Inform national policy and practice

This includes:

• informing government strategy to release the population from the current “lock down” in a precise and informed way, that mitigates the risk of a flare up of new infections
• improving messaging and to enhance comprehension, acceptability and cooperation with Government guidance and interventions
• testing the feasibility and acceptability of emerging strategies for COVID-19 testing such as point-of-care tests, home-based testing and antibody testing
• developing strategies to support highly vulnerable populations to reduce their risk of infection and limit unintended consequences
• reporting to the State and Federal Government through regular reports on compliance, key factors affecting compliance, and mechanisms to improve compliance.

Understand and predict through mathematical models

This includes:

• developing dynamic precision agent based mathematical models, utilising empirical data from the Optimise Study to inform and test strategic, such as the timing of the government’s release and restore strategies and the impact of various testing strategies,
  

Evidence from the Optimise Study will also assist community organisations and key health service groups in restoring economic activity and recreational activities whilst keeping new infections of COVID-19 at a low level. This involves real-time testing of key interventions to allow global scaling at speed.