ArticleJournal of theoretical biology2022
Estimating local outbreak risks and the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions in age-structured populations: SARS-CoV-2 as a case study.
Article in Journal of theoretical biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- 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
- Demographic changes and behavioural responses shape vulnerability to infectious disease outbreaks.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Effects of individual variation and seasonal vaccination on disease risks.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The time-dependent reproduction number for epidemics in heterogeneous populations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 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
- Reducing transmission in multiple settings is required to eliminate the risk of major Ebola outbreaks: a mathematical modelling study.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Quantifying infectious disease epidemic risks: A practical approach for seasonal pathogens.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Epidemiological feature analysis of SVEIR model with control strategy and variant evolution.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2024Article
- 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
- Analysis of the risk and pre-emptive control of viral outbreaks accounting for within-host dynamics: SARS-CoV-2 as a case study.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Projecting the COVID-19 immune landscape in Japan in the presence of waning immunity and booster vaccination.Journal of theoretical biology · 2023Article
- The heterogeneous mixing model of COVID-19 with interventions.Journal of theoretical biology · 2022Article
- Heterogeneity in the onwards transmission risk between local and imported cases affects practical estimates of the time-dependent reproduction number.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2022Article
- The impact of cross-reactive immunity on the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) including school closures, workplace closures and social distancing policies have been employed worldwide to reduce transmission and prevent local outbreaks. However, transmission and the effectiveness of NPIs depend strongly on age-related factors including heterogeneities in contact patterns and pathophysiology. Here, using SARS-CoV-2 as a case study, we develop a branching process model for assessing the risk that an infectious case arriving in a new location will initiate a local outbreak, accounting for the age distribution of the host population. We show that the risk of a local outbreak depends on the age of the index case, and we explore the effects of NPIs targeting individuals of different ages. Social distancing policies that reduce contacts outside of schools and workplaces and target individuals of all ages are predicted to reduce local outbreak risks substantially, whereas school closures have a more limited impact. In the scenarios considered here, when different NPIs are used in combination the risk of local outbreaks can be eliminated. We also show that heightened surveillance of infectious individuals reduces the level of NPIs required to prevent local outbreaks, particularly if enhanced surveillance of symptomatic cases is combined with efforts to find and isolate nonsymptomatic infected individuals. Our results reflect real-world experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which combinations of intense NPIs have reduced transmission and the risk of local outbreaks. The general modelling framework that we present can be used to estimate local outbreak risks during future epidemics of a range of pathogens, accounting fully for age-related factors.
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