TY - JOUR
T1 - Harnessing peak transmission around symptom onset for non-pharmaceutical intervention and containment of the COVID-19 pandemic
AU - Tian, Liang
AU - Li, Xuefei
AU - Qi, Fei
AU - Tang, Qian Yuan
AU - Tang, Viola
AU - Liu, Jiang
AU - Li, Zhiyuan
AU - Cheng, Xingye
AU - Li, Xuanxuan
AU - Shi, Yingchen
AU - Liu, Haiguang
AU - Tang, Lei Han
N1 - Funding Information:
The work is supported in part by the NSFC under Grant Nos. 11635002, 32000886, and U1930402, and by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) under Grants HKBU 12324716 and 12304020. Any views expressed by Jiang Liu and Viola Tang are not as a representative speaking for or on behalf of his/her employer, nor do they represent his/her employer’s positions, strategies or opinions.
PY - 2021/2/19
Y1 - 2021/2/19
N2 - Within a short period of time, COVID-19 grew into a world-wide pandemic. Transmission by pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic viral carriers rendered intervention and containment of the disease extremely challenging. Based on reported infection case studies, we construct an epidemiological model that focuses on transmission around the symptom onset. The model is calibrated against incubation period and pairwise transmission statistics during the initial outbreaks of the pandemic outside Wuhan with minimal non-pharmaceutical interventions. Mathematical treatment of the model yields explicit expressions for the size of latent and pre-symptomatic subpopulations during the exponential growth phase, with the local epidemic growth rate as input. We then explore reduction of the basic reproduction number R0 through specific transmission control measures such as contact tracing, testing, social distancing, wearing masks and sheltering in place. When these measures are implemented in combination, their effects on R0 multiply. We also compare our model behaviour to the first wave of the COVID-19 spreading in various affected regions and highlight generic and less generic features of the pandemic development.
AB - Within a short period of time, COVID-19 grew into a world-wide pandemic. Transmission by pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic viral carriers rendered intervention and containment of the disease extremely challenging. Based on reported infection case studies, we construct an epidemiological model that focuses on transmission around the symptom onset. The model is calibrated against incubation period and pairwise transmission statistics during the initial outbreaks of the pandemic outside Wuhan with minimal non-pharmaceutical interventions. Mathematical treatment of the model yields explicit expressions for the size of latent and pre-symptomatic subpopulations during the exponential growth phase, with the local epidemic growth rate as input. We then explore reduction of the basic reproduction number R0 through specific transmission control measures such as contact tracing, testing, social distancing, wearing masks and sheltering in place. When these measures are implemented in combination, their effects on R0 multiply. We also compare our model behaviour to the first wave of the COVID-19 spreading in various affected regions and highlight generic and less generic features of the pandemic development.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101274699&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-021-21385-z
DO - 10.1038/s41467-021-21385-z
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 33608519
AN - SCOPUS:85101274699
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 12
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 1147
ER -
