Efficacy of contact tracing for the containment of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)
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Abstract
Contact tracing is a central public health response to infectious disease outbreaks, especially in the early stages of an outbreak when specific treatments are limited. Importation of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) from China and elsewhere into the UK highlights the need to understand the impact of contact tracing as a control measure.
Design
Detailed survey information on social encounters from over 5800 respondents is coupled to predictive models of contact tracing and control. This is used to investigate the likely efficacy of contact tracing and the distribution of secondary cases that may go untraced.
Results
Taking recent estimates for COVID-19 transmission we predict that under effective contact tracing less than 1 in 6 cases will generate any subsequent untraced infections, although this comes at a high logistical burden with an average of 36 individuals traced per case. Changes to the definition of a close contact can reduce this burden, but with increased risk of untraced cases; we find that tracing using a contact definition requiring more than 4 hours of contact is unlikely to control spread.
Conclusions
The current contact tracing strategy within the UK is likely to identify a sufficient proportion of infected individuals such that subsequent spread could be prevented, although the ultimate success will depend on the rapid detection of cases and isolation of contacts. Given the burden of tracing a large number of contacts to find new cases, there is the potential the system could be overwhelmed if imports of infection occur at a rapid rate.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.14.20023036: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not 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 …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.14.20023036: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not 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.
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