Understanding the spreading patterns of COVID-19 in UK and its impact on exit strategies

  1. Maziar Nekovee

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Abstract

Prior to lockdown the spread of COVID-19 in UK is found to be exponential, with an exponent 0.207. In case of COVID-19 this spreading behaviour is quantitatively better described with a mobility-driven SIR-SEIR model [2] rather than the homogenous mixing models. Lockdown has dramatically slowed down the spread of COVID-19 in UK, and even more significantly, has changed the growth in the total number of infected from exponential to quadratic. This significant change is due to a transition from a mobility-driven epidemic spreading to a spatial epidemic which is dominated by slow growth of spatially isolated clusters of infected population. Our results strongly indicate that, to avoid a return to exponential growth of COVID-19 (also known as second wave), mobility restrictions should not be prematurely lifted. Instead mobility should be kept restricted while new measures, such as wearing of masks and contact tracing, get implemented in order to prevent health services becoming overwhelmed due to a resurgence of exponential growth.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.18.20105445: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.18.20105445v1 on medRxiv