Using high-resolution contact networks to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 transmission and control in large-scale multi-day events
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
The emergence of highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants has created a need to reassess the risk posed by increasing social contacts as countries resume pre-pandemic activities, particularly in the context of resuming large-scale events over multiple days. To examine how social contacts formed in different activity settings influences interventions required to control Delta variant outbreaks, we collected high-resolution data on contacts among passengers and crew on cruise ships and combined the data with network transmission models. We found passengers had a median of 20 (IQR 10–36) unique close contacts per day, and over 60% of their contact episodes were made in dining or sports areas where mask wearing is typically limited. In simulated outbreaks, we found that vaccination coverage and rapid antigen tests had a larger effect than mask mandates alone, indicating the importance of combined interventions against Delta to reduce event risk in the vaccine era.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.12.21266183: (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 code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:One limitation to our study was that we did not model contact tracing around detected cases. While cruise lines are trained to trace and quarantine close contacts as part of the pilot reopening, as the ease of rapid testing increases with fast turnaround time, this could serve as a replacement for slower and resource intensive contact tracing in such settings. With pre-symptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and high levels of …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.12.21266183: (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 code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:One limitation to our study was that we did not model contact tracing around detected cases. While cruise lines are trained to trace and quarantine close contacts as part of the pilot reopening, as the ease of rapid testing increases with fast turnaround time, this could serve as a replacement for slower and resource intensive contact tracing in such settings. With pre-symptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and high levels of transmissibility of the Delta variant, the effectiveness of contact tracing is approaching a point of saturation in many countries (30). Furthermore, even if the threshold for close contact to be traced is lowered, the corresponding exponential increase in contacts fulfilling this criteria would make it logistically challenging to trace all individuals in a reasonable amount of time. Fully asymptomatic infections – as opposed to presymptomatic infections – were also not considered in the analysis. Should these infections exhibit lowered viral load, the testing interventions would be less likely to detect asymptomatic individuals but any potential for increase in outbreak size would be counteracted by their lowered infectiousness. Currently, there is no strong evidence to suggest that asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Delta infections are less infectious than symptomatic individuals (31, 32). Lastly, the accuracy of the data collected is largely dependent on the usage behaviour. Passengers are required to carry the contact tracing devices at all times except when e...
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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
