May 28, 2020

Combining Fine-Scale Social Contact Data with Epidemic Modelling Reveals Interactions between Contact Tracing Quarantine Testing and Physical Distancing for Controlling COVID-19

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

• [pre-print, not peer reviewed] Firth et al. simulated contract tracing and testing strategies for SARS-CoV-2 using a real-world social network generated from GPS data. They found that tracing 2nd degree contacts (e.g. contacts-of-contacts) was more effective than only tracing 1st degree contacts, but would result in almost one third of the local population being quarantined at a single point in time. Testing and releasing non-infectious individuals would reduce the number of quarantined individuals, but would require high testing capacity. 

Firth et al. (May 27, 2020). Combining Fine-Scale Social Contact Data with Epidemic Modelling Reveals Interactions between Contact Tracing Quarantine Testing and Physical Distancing for Controlling COVID-19. Pre-print downloaded May 28 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.26.20113720