Fig. 4: Estimated need of oral antivirals.

Line plots show the ratio of estimated oral antiviral courses needed to number of people per year (expressed as 1 oral antiviral course per n number of individuals; assuming two epidemic waves a year) in various countries (color) under different simulated scenarios (i.e. testing rate at 100 or 500 tests/100,000 people/day (shading and linestyle) and distribution modality (left plot panel: test all symptomatic individuals who sought testing at clinics; middle plot panel: test all symptomatic individuals who sought testing as well as distributing clinic-provided self-tests to high-risk asymptomatic household contacts of test-positive individuals; right plot panel: test only high-risk symptomatic individuals who sought testing at clinics). All test-positive eligible high-risk individuals from clinic-provided testing would receive a course of oral antivirals. For the Netherlands, over-the-counter antigen rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDTs) are assumed to be widely available that most high-risk individuals would perform a self-test first and only seek reflexive testing at clinics if their over-the-counter tests were positive. (a) 10%, (b) 50% and (c) 90% (Low and middle-income countries; LMICs); 80% (Netherlands) vaccination coverage assumed for the simulated population.