ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Using a household-structured branching process to analyse contact tracing in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions as implemented in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic: a rapid review.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Effectiveness of testing, contact tracing and isolation interventions among the general population on reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a systematic review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Comparative effectiveness of contact tracing interventions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Article
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce COVID-19 transmission in the UK: a rapid mapping review and interactive evidence gap map.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2024Review
- New framework to assess tracing and testing based on South Korea's response to COVID-19.BMC infectious diseases · 2024Review
- Looking under the lamp-post: quantifying the performance of contact tracing in the United States during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Diversity of symptom phenotypes in SARS-CoV-2 community infections observed in multiple large datasets.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Parameter estimation for contact tracing in graph-based models.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Assessment of a SARS-CoV-2 population-wide rapid antigen testing in Italy: a modeling and economic analysis study.European journal of public health · 2023Article
- Attitudes towards booster, testing and isolation, and their impact on COVID-19 response in winter 2022/2023 in France, Belgium, and Italy: a cross-sectional survey and modelling study.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2023Article
- Modelling the impact of repeat asymptomatic testing policies for staff on SARS-CoV-2 transmission potential.Journal of theoretical biology · 2023Article
- Modelling the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on workplace transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the home-delivery sector.PloS one · 2023Article
- Visualization for epidemiological modelling: challenges, solutions, reflections and recommendations.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2022Article
- A computational framework for modelling infectious disease policy based on age and household structure with applications to the COVID-19 pandemic.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Empirical evidence on the efficiency of backward contact tracing in COVID-19.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Modelling that shaped the early COVID-19 pandemic response in the UK.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- A renewal equation model to assess roles and limitations of contact tracing for disease outbreak control.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- A Review of Using Mathematical Modeling to Improve Our Understanding of Bacteriophage, Bacteria, and Eukaryotic Interactions.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
We explore strategies of contact tracing, case isolation and quarantine of exposed contacts to control the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic using a branching process model with household structure. This structure reflects higher transmission risks among household members than among non-household members. We explore strategic implementation choices that make use of household structure, and investigate strategies including two-step tracing, backwards tracing, smartphone tracing and tracing upon symptom report rather than test results. The primary model outcome is the effect of contact tracing, in combination with different levels of physical distancing, on the growth rate of the epidemic. Furthermore, we investigate epidemic extinction times to indicate the time period over which interventions must be sustained. We consider effects of non-uptake of isolation/quarantine, non-adherence, and declining recall of contacts over time. Our results find that, compared to self-isolation of cases without contact tracing, a contact tracing strategy designed to take advantage of household structure allows for some relaxation of physical distancing measures but cannot completely control the epidemic absent of other measures. Even assuming no imported cases and sustainment of moderate physical distancing, testing and tracing efforts, the time to bring the epidemic to extinction could be in the order of months to years. This article is part of the theme issue 'Modelling that shaped the early COVID-19 pandemic response in the UK'.
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