ArticleNature communications2021
The impact of contact tracing and household bubbles on deconfinement strategies for COVID-19.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A scoping review of COVID-19 modelling studies in Belgium 2020-2024: incorporation of behaviour and lessons learned.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Pooled it
- Data-driven strategies for model-informed decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2026Pooled it
- Comparative effectiveness of contact tracing interventions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Measures implemented in the school setting to contain the COVID-19 pandemicThe Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2022Pooled it
- A comparison of contact patterns derived from the population structure in agent-based models and empirical contact survey data.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Predictive triage for testing may improve control of a COVID-19 epidemic while reducing testing requirements.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Article
- Evaluating COVID-19 vaccine allocation policies using Bayesian m-top exploration.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Belgium's SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing effectively curbed transmission, yet challenges persist in terms of delays, scalability and population adherence.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Assessing the role of children in the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium using perturbation analysis.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Addressing current limitations of household transmission studies by collecting contact data.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Novel travel time aware metapopulation models and multi-layer waning immunity for late-phase epidemic and endemic scenarios.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Repetition in social contacts: implications in modelling the transmission of respiratory infectious diseases in pre-pandemic and pandemic settings.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The impact of quality-adjusted life years on evaluating COVID-19 mitigation strategies: lessons from age-specific vaccination roll-out and variants of concern in Belgium (2020-2022).BMC public health · 2024Article
- Serological screening in a large-scale municipal survey in Cascais, Portugal, during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons for future pandemic preparedness efforts.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Temporal clustering of social interactions trades-off disease spreading and knowledge diffusion.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Population age and household structures shape transmission dynamics of emerging infectious diseases: a longitudinal microsimulation approach.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Exploring the impact of population ageing on the spread of emerging respiratory infections and the associated burden of mortality.BMC infectious diseases · 2023Article
- A dashboard for the evaluation of the effect of school closures on wellbeing of children and parents.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2023Article
- A high-frequency mobility big-data reveals how COVID-19 spread across professions, locations and age groups.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Key performance indicators of COVID-19 contact tracing in Belgium from September 2020 to December 2021.PloS one · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic caused many governments to impose policies restricting social interactions. A controlled and persistent release of lockdown measures covers many potential strategies and is subject to extensive scenario analyses. Here, we use an individual-based model (STRIDE) to simulate interactions between 11 million inhabitants of Belgium at different levels including extended household settings, i.e., "household bubbles". The burden of COVID-19 is impacted by both the intensity and frequency of physical contacts, and therefore, household bubbles have the potential to reduce hospital admissions by 90%. In addition, we find that it is crucial to complete contact tracing 4 days after symptom onset. Assumptions on the susceptibility of children affect the impact of school reopening, though we find that business and leisure-related social mixing patterns have more impact on COVID-19 associated disease burden. An optimal deployment of the mitigation policies under study require timely compliance to physical distancing, testing and self-isolation.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.