Regional opening strategies with commuter testing and containment of new SARS-CoV-2 variants in Germany.

BACKGROUND: Despite the vaccination process in Germany, a large share of the population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. In addition, we face the spread of novel variants. Until we overcome the pandemic, reasonable mitigation and opening strategies are crucial to balance public health and economic interests. METHODS: We model the spread of SARS-CoV-2 over the German counties by a graph-SIR-type, metapopulation model with particular focus on commuter testing. We account for political interventions by varying contact reduction values in private and public locations such as homes, schools, workplaces, and other. We consider different levels of lockdown strictness, commuter testing strategies, or the delay of intervention implementation. We conduct numerical simulations to assess the effectiveness of the different intervention strategies after one month. The virus dynamics in the regions (German counties) are initialized randomly with incidences between 75 and 150 weekly new cases per 100,000 inhabitants (red zones) or below (green zones) and consider 25 different initial scenarios of randomly distributed red zones (between 2 and 20% of all counties). To account for uncertainty, we consider an ensemble set of 500 Monte Carlo runs for each scenario. RESULTS: We find that the strength of the lockdown in regions with out of control virus dynamics is most important to avoid the spread into neighboring regions. With very strict lockdowns in red zones, commuter testing rates of twice a week can substantially contribute to the safety of adjacent regions. In contrast, the negative effect of less strict interventions can be overcome by high commuter testing rates. A further key contributor is the potential delay of the intervention implementation. In order to keep the spread of the virus under control, strict regional lockdowns with minimum delay and commuter testing of at least twice a week are advisable. If less strict interventions are in favor, substantially increased testing rates are needed to avoid overall higher infection dynamics. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that local containment of outbreaks and maintenance of low overall incidence is possible even in densely populated and highly connected regions such as Germany or Western Europe. While we demonstrate this on data from Germany, similar patterns of mobility likely exist in many countries and our results are, hence, generalizable to a certain extent.

Assessment of effective mitigation and prediction of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany using demographic information and spatial resolution.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are important to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases as long as no vaccination or outstanding medical treatments are available. We assess the effectiveness of the sets of non-pharmaceutical interventions that were in place during the course of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic in Germany. Our results are based on hybrid models, combining SIR-type models on local scales with spatial resolution. In order to account for the age-dependence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), we include realistic prepandemic and recently recorded contact patterns between age groups. The implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions will occur on changed contact patterns, improved isolation, or reduced infectiousness when, e.g., wearing masks. In order to account for spatial heterogeneity, we use a graph approach and we include high-quality information on commuting activities combined with traveling information from social networks. The remaining uncertainty will be accounted for by a large number of randomized simulation runs. Based on the derived factors for the effectiveness of different non-pharmaceutical interventions over the past months, we provide different forecast scenarios for the upcoming time.

Pyrometric-Based Melt Pool Monitoring Study of CuCr1Zr Processed Using L-PBF.

The potential of in situ melt pool monitoring (MPM) for parameter development and furthering the process understanding in Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) of CuCr1Zr was investigated. Commercial MPM systems are currently being developed as a quality monitoring tool with the aim of detecting faulty parts already in the build process and, thus, reducing costs in LPBF. A detailed analysis of coupon specimens allowed two processing windows to be established for a suitably dense material at layer thicknesses of 30 µm and 50 µm, which were subsequently evaluated with two complex thermomechanical-fatigue (TMF) panels. Variations due to the location on the build platform were taken into account for the parameter development. Importantly, integrally averaged MPM intensities showed no direct correlation with total porosities, while the robustness of the melting process, impacted strongly by balling, affected the scattering of the MPM response and can thus be assessed. However, the MPM results, similar to material properties such as porosity, cannot be directly transferred from coupon specimens to components due to the influence of the local part geometry and heat transport on the build platform. Different MPM intensity ranges are obtained on cuboids and TMF panels despite similar LPBF parameters. Nonetheless, besides identifying LPBF parameter windows with a stable process, MPM allowed the successful detection of individual defects on the surface and in the bulk of the large demonstrators and appears to be a suitable tool for quality monitoring during fabrication and non-destructive evaluation of the LPBF process.