Title: A quantitative comparison of quarantine and symptom monitoring

Abstract: Quarantine and symptom monitoring of contacts with suspected exposure to an infectious disease are key interventions for the control of emerging epidemics; however, there does not yet exist a quantitative framework for comparing the control performance of each. Here, we use an agent-based branching model of seven case study diseases to show how the choice of intervention is influenced by the natural history of the infectious disease, its inherent transmissibility, and the intervention feasibility in the particular healthcare setting. We use this information to identify the most important characteristics of the disease and setting that need to be characterized for an emerging pathogen in order to make an informed decision between quarantine and symptom monitoring.