SCoVMod – a spatially explicit mobility and deprivation adjusted model of first wave COVID-19 transmission dynamics
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Background : Mobility restrictions prevent the spread of infections to disease-free areas, and early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, most countries imposed severe restrictions on mobility as soon as it was clear that containment of local outbreaks was insufficient to control spread. These restrictions have adverse impacts on the economy and other aspects of human health, and it is important to quantify their impact for evaluating their future value.
Methods : Here we develop Scotland Coronavirus transmission Model (SCoVMod), a model for COVID-19 in Scotland, which presents unusual challenges because of its diverse geography and population conditions. Our fitted model captures spatio-temporal patterns of mortality in the first phase of the epidemic to a fine geographical scale.
Results : We find that lockdown restrictions reduced transmission rates down to an estimated 12\% of its pre-lockdown rate. We show that, while the timing of COVID-19 restrictions influences the role of the transmission rate on the number of COVID-related deaths, early reduction in long distance movements does not. However, poor health associated with deprivation has a considerable association with mortality; the Council Area (CA) with the greatest health-related deprivation was found to have a mortality rate 2.45 times greater than the CA with the lowest health-related deprivation considering all deaths occurring outside of carehomes.
Conclusions : We find that in even an early epidemic with poor case ascertainment, a useful spatially explicit model can be fit with meaningful parameters based on the spatio-temporal distribution of death counts. Our simple approach is useful to strategically examine trade-offs between travel related restrictions and physical distancing, and the effect of deprivation-related factors on outcomes.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.25.20144139: (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: Thank you for sharing your code.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Despite these caveats, our simple approach is useful to strategically examine trade-offs between travel related restrictions, and social distancing when evaluating future releases from lockdown. “Small world” effects suggest that even a small number of long distance movements, joining up communities, are sufficient to cause widespread epidemics. Here however, most of the protection, even geographically is a result of transmission reduction; …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.25.20144139: (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: Thank you for sharing your code.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Despite these caveats, our simple approach is useful to strategically examine trade-offs between travel related restrictions, and social distancing when evaluating future releases from lockdown. “Small world” effects suggest that even a small number of long distance movements, joining up communities, are sufficient to cause widespread epidemics. Here however, most of the protection, even geographically is a result of transmission reduction; long distance restrictions only have a minimal impact most likely because in our model, transmission that does not occur at long distance does occur at the OA level, increasing the infection pressure from remaining commuters. Thus only extreme travel restrictions are likely to have an impact, at least until build-up of immunity levels is more substantial than observed here. The estimates of mobility under even extreme lockdown we use here suggest this kind of elimination is difficult to achieve, and thus any travel restrictions must be accompanied by measures to continue to reduce transmission if, in future, we are to prevent spread of COVID-19 to areas that have successfully eradicated local COVID-19 cases.
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.
- Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.
-
