The impact of contact tracing and household bubbles on deconfinement strategies for COVID-19
(2021) Nature Communications — Vol. 12, n° 1, p. 9p (2021)
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- Authors
Willem, Lander 
Abrams, Steven Hens, Niel
- Abstract
- The COVID-19 pandemic caused many governments to impose policies restricting social interactions. A controlled and persistent release of lockdown measures covers many potential strategies and is subject to extensive scenario analyses. Here, we use an individual-based model (STRIDE) to simulate interactions between 11 million inhabitants of Belgium at dif- ferent levels including extended household settings, i.e., “household bubbles”. The burden of COVID-19 is impacted by both the intensity and frequency of physical contacts, and therefore, household bubbles have the potential to reduce hospital admissions by 90%. In addition, we find that it is crucial to complete contact tracing 4 days after symptom onset. Assumptions on the susceptibility of children affect the impact of school reopening, though we find that business and leisure-related social mixing patterns have more impact on COVID-19 associated disease burden. An optimal deployment of the mitigation policies under study require timely compliance to physical distancing, testing and self-isolation.
- Affiliations
Data Science Institute UHasselt
Citations
Willem, L., Abrams, S., Libin, P. J. K., Coletti, P., Kuylen, E., Petrof, O., Møgelmose, S., Wambua, J., Herzog, S. A., Faes, C., Beutels, P., & Hens, N. (2021). The impact of contact tracing and household bubbles on deconfinement strategies for COVID-19. Nature Communications, 12(1), 9p. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21747-7 (Original work published 2021)