Overdispersion in COVID-19 increases the effectiveness of limiting nonrepetitive contacts for transmission control
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Increasing evidence indicates that superspreading plays a dominant role in COVID-19 transmission. Recent estimates suggest that the dispersion parameter k for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is on the order of 0.1, which corresponds to about 10% of cases being the source of 80% of infections. To investigate how overdispersion might affect the outcome of various mitigation strategies, we developed an agent-based model with a social network that allows transmission through contact in three sectors: "close" (a small, unchanging group of mutual contacts as might be found in a household), "regular" (a larger, unchanging group as might be found in a workplace or school), and "random" (drawn from the entire model population and not repeated regularly). We assigned individual infectivity from a gamma distribution with dispersion parameter k. We found that when k was low (i.e., greater heterogeneity, more superspreading events), reducing random sector contacts had a far greater impact on the epidemic trajectory than did reducing regular contacts; when k was high (i.e., less heterogeneity, no superspreading events), that difference disappeared. These results suggest that overdispersion of COVID-19 transmission gives the virus an Achilles' heel: Reducing contacts between people who do not regularly meet would substantially reduce the pandemic, while reducing repeated contacts in defined social groups would be less effective.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 2016623118 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 118 |
Issue number | 14 |
Number of pages | 6 |
ISSN | 0027-8424 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 6 Apr 2021 |
- pandemic, overdispersion, mitigation strategies, superspreading, social networks
Research areas
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