Assessing the impact of adherence to Non-pharmaceutical interventions and indirect transmission on the dynamics of COVID-19: a mathematical modelling study

  1. Sarafa A. Iyaniwura
  2. Musa Rabiu
  3. Jummy F. David
  4. Jude D. Kong

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Abstract

Adherence to public health policies such as the non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented against COVID-19 plays a major role in reducing infections and controlling the spread of the diseases. In addition, understanding the transmission dynamics of the disease is also important in order to make and implement efficient public health policies. In this paper, we developed an SEIR-type compartmental model to assess the impact of adherence to COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions and indirect transmission on the dynamics of the disease. Our model considers both direct and indirect transmission routes and stratifies the population into two groups: those that adhere to COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and those that do not adhere to the NPIs. We compute the control reproduction number and the final epidemic size relation for our model and study the effect of different parameters of the model on these quantities. Our results show that direct transmission has more effect on the reproduction number and final epidemic size, relative to indirect transmission. In addition, we showed that there is a significant benefit in adhering to the COVID-19 NPIs.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.16.21262135: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our model is prone to some limitations. This includes our assumptions that the population is well-mixed. We know contact rates vary from one person to another depending on their age group and activity level. Also, mixing patterns are different for individuals of different age groups. Using homogeneous mixing, we assume that everyone in the population has the same contact rate and mixing pattern. Another limitation of our model is that we have clustered all COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) into one group, assuming that any individual that adheres to one of them will adhere to all. This may not be the case in reality. Some individuals may adhere to only a few of the NPIs. It would be nice to distinguish between the NPIs and study the effect of different NPIs on the disease dynamics. Similarly, we have assumed that the rate of movement from adherence to non-adherence and vice versa are constant over time. In a real-world scenario, these rates may change from time to time and may be affected by government policies and their implementation of the NPIs. Despite these limitations, our model can capture the overall dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic considering infections transmitted through direct and indirect routes, and with and without adherence to the COVID-19 NPIs.

    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: Please consider improving the rainbow (“jet”) colormap(s) used on pages 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 12, 44, 45, 46 and 47. At least one figure is not accessible to readers with colorblindness and/or is not true to the data, i.e. not perceptually uniform.

    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.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.08.16.21262135 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.3934/mbe.2021439