ArticleJournal of infection and public health2022
Impacts of social distancing, rapid antigen test and vaccination on the Omicron outbreak during large temperature variations in Hong Kong: A modelling study.
Article in Journal of infection and public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of social distancing measures and lockdowns for reducing transmission of COVID-19 in non-healthcare, community-based settings.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Impact of vaccination on Omicron's escape variants: Insights from fine-scale modelling of waning immunity in Hong Kong.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
- Association Between Hemoglobin-Albumin-Lymphocyte-Platelet Index and Mortality in Hospitalized COVID-19 Omicron BA.2 Infected Patients.Infection and drug resistance · 2024Article
- Space and social distancing in managing and preventing COVID-19 community spread: An overview.Heliyon · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe impacts of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and vaccine boosters on the transmission of the largest outbreak of COVID-19 (the fifth wave) in Hong Kong have not been reported. The outbreak, dominated by the Omicron BA.2 subvariant, began to spread substantially after the Spring Festival in February, 2022, when the temperature varied greatly (e.g. a cold surge event). Tightening social distancing measures did not succeed in containing the outbreak until later with the use of rapid antigen tests (RAT) and increased vaccination rates. Temperature has been previously found to have significant impact on the transmissibility. Understanding how the public health interventions influence the number of infections in this outbreak provide important insights on prevention and control of COVID-19 during different seasons.
methodsWe developed a transmission model incorporating stratified immunity with vaccine-induced antibody responses and the daily changes in population mobility, vaccination and weather factors (i.e. temperature and relative humidity). We fitted the model to the daily reported cases detected by either PCR or RAT between 1 February and 31 March using Bayesian statistics, and quantified the effects of individual NPIs, vaccination and weather factors on transmission dynamics.
resultsModel predicted that, with the vaccine uptake, social distancing reduced the cumulative incidence (CI) from 58.2% to 44.5% on average. The use of RAT further reduced the CI to 39.0%. Without vaccine boosters in these two months, the CI increased to 49.1%. While public health interventions are important in reducing the total infections, the outbreak was temporarily driven by the cold surge. If the coldest two days (8.5 °C and 8.8 °C) in February were replaced by the average temperature in that month (15.2 °C), the CI would reduce from 39.0% to 28.2%.
conclusionPreventing and preparing for the transmission of COVID-19 considering the change in temperature appears to be a cost-effective preventive strategy to lead people to return to normal life.
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