Impact of Temporal Patterns in Working Contacts on Epidemic Spread
Bryzgalov, A.; Ponge, J.; Suer, J.; Krueger, T.; Musundi, B.; Xu, C.; Bock, W.; Kahkashan, M.; Karch, A.; Patzner, J.; Kretzschmar, M.; Mikolajczyk, R.; OptimAgent,
Show abstract
Most models for infectious disease spread simplify contact heterogeneity by assuming constant rates within a week. However, empirical studies show clear variation, such as reduced workplace contacts on weekends. In this work, we investigate the effects of daily variation in workplace contacts on the spread of respiratory infections using the individual-based framework GEMS (German Epidemic Micro-Simulation System) with a synthetic population of 5 million individuals. We compare a baseline scenario with uniform daily contacts to an alternative with more contacts on workdays and fewer on weekends, keeping weekly totals constant. Simulations reveal that uniform contact rates result in higher prevalence for short latent periods (1-2 days) and reduced one for longer latencies (5-6 days). The effect diminishes for long infectious periods ([≥] 7 days) but is more pronounced at lower basic reproduction numbers. Depending on the disease specification and the differences in weekday contacts, the impact of weekday heterogeneity can be very strong. These findings open new possibilities for weekday-dependent mitigation measures. We conclude that weekly contact dynamics should be explicitly incorporated into epidemic models to avoid systematic errors in reproduction number estimation.
Matching journals
The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
- Analysis of mitigation of Covid-19 outbreaks in workplaces and schools by hybrid telecommuting 98%
- Novel travel time aware metapopulation models and multi-layer waning immunity for late-phase epidemic and endemic scenarios 98%
- Appropriate relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions minimizes the risk of a resurgence in SARS-CoV-2 infections in spite of the Delta variant 98%
Similar papers in this journal
- Model Based Estimation of the SARS-CoV-2 Immunization Level in Austria and Consequences for Herd Immunity Effects 98%
- Ranking the Effectiveness of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions to Counter COVID-19 in UK Universities with Vaccinated Population 98%
- Easing COVID-19 lockdown measures while protecting the older restricts the deaths to the level of the full lockdown 97%
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
- The trade-off between mobility and vaccination for COVID-19 control: a metapopulation modeling approach 97%
- Nowcasting and Forecasting COVID-19 Waves: The Recursive and Stochastic Nature of Transmission 97%
- Modelling COVID-19 mutant dynamics: understanding the interplay between viral evolution and disease transmission dynamics 97%
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.