Overdispersion in COVID-19 increases the effectiveness of limiting nonrepetitive contacts for transmission control
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Abstract
Evidence indicates that superspreading plays a dominant role in COVID-19 transmission, so that a small fraction of infected people causes a large proportion of new COVID-19 cases. We developed an agent-based model that simulates a superspreading disease moving through a society with networks of both repeated contacts and nonrepeated, random contacts. The results indicate that superspreading is the virus’ Achilles’ heel: Reducing random contacts—such as those that occur at sporting events, restaurants, bars, and the like—can control the outbreak at population scales.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.17.20104745: (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:When the “other” sector is open, however, the superspreader faces no such limitation. This means that an epidemic driven by superspreaders is fueled by the diversity of personal contacts, and is less dependent on the duration of contacts. Therefore closing the “work/school” sector in the model provides less benefit than closing the …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.17.20104745: (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:When the “other” sector is open, however, the superspreader faces no such limitation. This means that an epidemic driven by superspreaders is fueled by the diversity of personal contacts, and is less dependent on the duration of contacts. Therefore closing the “work/school” sector in the model provides less benefit than closing the “other” sector. Our model results indicate that mitigation policies designed to limit transmission during random contacts between people not otherwise linked will likely provide a far greater benefit than closing workplaces and schools. That is, mitigation strategies should aim to limit the opportunities for large numbers of people to come into contact with a superspreader. These opportunities include large events as well as contacts in other public spaces such as public transportation. For situations where such contacts cannot be avoided, steps such as wearing face masks and moving events outdoors could have the an impact similar to that of preventing the contact altogether. Our study is subject to several limitations. The most obvious is a model’s simplicity compared to the complex reality of human society. We relegated all random (non-repeating) contacts to the “other” category, so that contacts with known persons occurred only through fixed social networks at home or the workplace. In reality, many interactions in the “other” sector would be with familiar persons such as friends and extended family, while some of the interactions in the “work/s...
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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