ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2021
Sub-spreading events limit the reliable elimination of heterogeneous epidemics.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Real-time inference of the end of an outbreak: Temporally aggregated disease incidence data and under-reporting.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
- Simulation-based inference of the time-dependent reproduction number from temporally aggregated and under-reported disease incidence time series data.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Article
- Using real-time modelling to inform the 2017 Ebola outbreak response in DR Congo.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Optimizing the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration: Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Science advances · 2024Article
- Host behaviour driven by awareness of infection risk amplifies the chance of superspreading events.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Exact calculation of end-of-outbreak probabilities using contact tracing data.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Angular reproduction numbers improve estimates of transmissibility when disease generation times are misspecified or time-varying.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Heterogeneity is a key factor describing the initial outbreak of COVID-19.Applied mathematical modelling · 2023Article
- Monitoring real-time transmission heterogeneity from incidence data.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Characterizing superspreading potential of infectious disease: Decomposition of individual transmissibility.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Fundamental limits on inferring epidemic resurgence in real time using effective reproduction numbers.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
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Abstract
We show that sub-spreading events, i.e. transmission events in which an infection propagates to few or no individuals, can be surprisingly important for defining the lifetime of an infectious disease epidemic and hence its waiting time to elimination or fade-out, measured from the time-point of its last observed case. While limiting super-spreading promotes more effective control when cases are growing, we find that when incidence is waning, curbing sub-spreading is more important for achieving reliable elimination of the epidemic. Controlling super-spreading in this low-transmissibility phase offers diminishing returns over non-selective, population-wide measures. By restricting sub-spreading, we efficiently dampen remaining variations among the reproduction numbers of infectious events, which minimizes the risk of premature and late end-of-epidemic declarations. Because case-ascertainment or reporting rates can be modelled in exactly the same way as control policies, we concurrently show that the under-reporting of sub-spreading events during waning phases will engender overconfident assessments of epidemic elimination. While controlling sub-spreading may not be easily realized, the likely neglecting of these events by surveillance systems could result in unexpectedly risky end-of-epidemic declarations. Super-spreading controls the size of the epidemic peak but sub-spreading mediates the variability of its tail.
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