December 30, 2020

Chopping the Tail: How Preventing Superspreading Can Help to Maintain COVID-19 Control

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

Keywords (Tags): modeling prediction, public health, transmission

Interventions that specifically target superspreading events while partially relaxing social distancing could be a viable alternative to blanket policies, according to a transmission model incorporating a variety of non-pharmaceutical interventions parametrized to a variety of settings. Removing the top 1% of individual transmission rates (essentially, superspreading events that connect a single infectious person to large numbers of people) with 75% efficiency could suppress epidemic growth.

Kain et al. (Dec 21, 2020). Chopping the Tail: How Preventing Superspreading Can Help to Maintain COVID-19 Control. Epidemics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epidem.2020.100430