Assessing the impact of SARS-CoV-2 prevention measures in Austrian schools using agent-based simulations and cluster tracing data

  1. Jana Lasser
  2. Johannes Sorger
  3. Lukas Richter
  4. Stefan Thurner
  5. Daniela Schmid
  6. Peter Klimek

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Abstract

We aim to identify those measures that effectively control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Austrian schools. Using cluster tracing data we calibrate an agent-based epidemiological model and consider situations where the B1.617.2 (delta) virus strain is dominant and parts of the population are vaccinated to quantify the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as room ventilation, reduction of class size, wearing of masks during lessons, vaccinations, and school entry testing by SARS-CoV2-antigen tests. In the data we find that 40% of all clusters involved no more than two cases, and 3% of the clusters only had more than 20 cases. The model shows that combinations of NPIs together with vaccinations are necessary to allow for a controlled opening of schools under sustained community transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant. For plausible vaccination rates, primary (secondary) schools require a combination of at least two (three) of the above NPIs.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41467-022-28170-6
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255320v2 on medRxiv
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255320: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations of the study: Our work is subject to several limitations, pertaining both to the observational cluster data our calibration relies on, as well as to simplifications employed in the model. The issue of age-dependent transmission risk is currently controversially discussed (see for example Anastassopoulou et al. 2020 (35)). The transmission dynamics can be attributed to information bias, due to a higher share of asymptomatic cases in children – or to a mix of information bias and true decreased transmission risk among children. Our data clearly confirms that the probability for asymptomatic courses of the infection decreases with age (see Figure 8). TTI strategies are typically triggered by the occurrence of a symptomatic case. Cluster cases might have been missed because not all contacts of the cases have been tested for infection. Since adults with a SARS-CoV-2 infection are more likely to develop symptoms and therefore to be tested, source cases might have been identified over-proportionally among teachers than among students. This might result in missed instances of student-to-student and student-to-teacher transmissions. The data on which our calibration is based upon represents a time at which the social environment of confirmed positive cases was stringently tested by the Austrian authorities. Specifically, authorities tested both category 1 and category 2 contact persons without discriminating between symptomatic and asymptomatic presentation. Nevertheless, ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  4. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255320v1 on medRxiv