--- title: "Researchers: Working Just 8 Days Per Month Could Help Fight COVID" description: "A team of researchers have come up with an idea to help contain the number of new coronavirus infections: working 4 days, and then staying at home for 10." date: "2020-05-13" modified: "2020-05-13" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/two-week-cycle-fight-covid" categories: - "Developments" - "Health & Medicine" tags: - "coronavirus" - "covid19" - "health" --- # Researchers: Working Just 8 Days Per Month Could Help Fight COVID ![A team of researchers have come up with an idea to help contain the number of new coronavirus infections: working 4 days, and then staying at home for 10.]() *\Image: Victor Tangermann\* A team of Israeli researchers have an unusual new idea to help contain coronavirus infections: working in 4-day shifts, and then staying at home for 10 days, as [*Fast Company* reports](). "The idea is that people will work in two-week cycles," Ron Milo, a professor of computational and systems biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told *Fast Company*. The concept takes advantage of the virus's biology. If workers got sick during those initial four days, symptoms would start to show within the consecutive ten days at home, allowing them to stay away from work and avoid infecting others. "We can find a way out of this dilemma by exploiting a key property of the virus: its latent period — the three-day delay on average between the time a person is infected and the time he or she can infect others," Milo and his colleagues wrote in a recent [opinion piece for *The New York Times*](). In practice, the idea would be to work in alternating shifts. "Businesses would work almost continuously, alternating between two groups of workers, for regular and predictable production," reads the *Times* piece. "This would increase consumer confidence, shoring up supply and demand simultaneously." In fact, schools in Austria are already sending kids to school in [two groups](), taking turns attending classes. The idea is to reduce the number of students in one place, ensuring they are able to socially distance. Through computer models, Milo and his colleagues found that the R value — or reproduction value, referring to the number of people an infected person goes on to infect — would drop below one if everybody followed this unusual two-week cycle. Four days is just a suggested starting point. "If infections rates grow, it can be adjusted to fewer work days," Milo wrote in his piece for *NYT*. "Conversely, if things are going well, additional work days can be added. In certain scenarios, only four or five lockdown days in each two-week cycle could still prevent resurgence." Those who can work remotely should continue to do just that, according to Milo. "In a way, they are helping those that do not have that freedom and must go to work out of the house," he told *Fast Company*. ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()