Modeling the effect of lockdown timing as a COVID-19 control measure in countries with differing social contacts
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Abstract
The application, timing, and duration of lockdown strategies during a pandemic remain poorly quantified with regards to expected public health outcomes. Previous projection models have reached conflicting conclusions about the effect of complete lockdowns on COVID-19 outcomes. We developed a stochastic continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) model with eight states including the environment (SEAMHQRD-V), and derived a formula for the basic reproduction number, R 0 , for that model. Applying the $${R}_{0}$$ R 0 formula as a function in previously-published social contact matrices from 152 countries, we produced the distribution and four categories of possible $${R}_{0}$$ R 0 for the 152 countries and chose one country from each quarter as a representative for four social contact categories (Canada, China, Mexico, and Niger). The model was then used to predict the effects of lockdown timing in those four categories through the representative countries. The analysis for the effect of a lockdown was performed without the influence of the other control measures, like social distancing and mask wearing, to quantify its absolute effect. Hypothetical lockdown timing was shown to be the critical parameter in ameliorating pandemic peak incidence. More importantly, we found that well-timed lockdowns can split the peak of hospitalizations into two smaller distant peaks while extending the overall pandemic duration. The timing of lockdowns reveals that a “tunneling” effect on incidence can be achieved to bypass the peak and prevent pandemic caseloads from exceeding hospital capacity.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.14.20231886: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:One important limitation of compartmental models, as used in this paper, are less suitable to model household infection dynamics since homes have limited numbers of individuals and once infected, they are removed from the ongoing epidemic. This modeling weakness is difficult to incorporate by compartmental models in general, so incidence …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.14.20231886: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:One important limitation of compartmental models, as used in this paper, are less suitable to model household infection dynamics since homes have limited numbers of individuals and once infected, they are removed from the ongoing epidemic. This modeling weakness is difficult to incorporate by compartmental models in general, so incidence may be overestimated. On the other hand, since household contact rates tend to increase during lockdowns the resulting incidence might also increase, counter-balancing this issue; which we did not incorporate in this model trying to overcome some of the inherent limitations to this type of compartmental modeling of household transmission. Also, all timing scenarios in this paper are subjected to the same limitation and so the qualitative rather than quantitative findings of the paper are to be considered. Finally, estimation of the pandemic peak by individual countries at the start of a pandemic with limited epidemiological case data remains a significant challenge for public health officials. Accurately timing lockdowns to achieve a “tunneling effect” is vital to maximize its benefits. Our results endorse that hypothetical lockdown scenarios for representative countries (Canada, China, Mexico, and Niger) spanning a continuum of increasing rates of social contact can all benefit from well-timed lockdown interventions.
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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