Abstract

Directly transmitted infectious diseases spread through social contacts that change over time, but outbreak models typically make simplifying assumptions about network structure and dynamics. To assess how common assumptions relate to real-world interactions, we analysed 11 networks from five settings and developed metrics, capturing crucial epidemiological features of these networks. We developed a novel metric, the 'retention index', to characterize the distribution of retained contacts over consecutive time steps relative to fully static and dynamic networks. In workplaces and schools, contacts in the same department formed most of the retained contacts. In contrast, no clear contact type dominated the retained contacts in hospitals, thus reducing overall risk of disease introduction would be more effective than control targeted at departments. We estimated the contacts repetition over multiple days and showed that simple resource planning models overestimate the number of unique contacts by 20%-70%. We distinguished the difference between 'superspreader' and infectious individuals driving 'superspreading events' by measuring how often the individual represents the top 80% of contacts in the time steps over the study duration. We showed an inherent difficulty in identifying 'superspreaders' reliably: less than 20% of the individuals in most settings were highly connected for multiple time steps.

Original languageEnglish
Article number20240358
JournalJournal of The Royal Society Interface
Volume21
Issue number221
Early online date18 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Dec 2024

Data Availability Statement

Data and code available at [32].

Supplementary material is available online [33].

Funding

R.P. acknowledges funding from the Singapore Ministry of Health. J.A.F. was supported by funding from BBSRC (BB/S009752/1) and NERC (NE/S010335/1 and NE/V013483/1). A.J.K. acknowledges support from Wellcome Trust (206250/Z/17/Z), data.org (Epiverse-TRACE) and NIHR HPRU in Modelling and Health Economics, a partnership between the UK Health Security Agency, Imperial College London and LSHTM (NIHR200908). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, UK Health Security Agency or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Keywords

  • outbreak control
  • superspreader
  • superspreading
  • temporal network

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biotechnology
  • Biophysics
  • Bioengineering
  • Biomaterials
  • Biochemistry
  • Biomedical Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Temporal contact patterns and the implications for predicting superspreaders and planning of targeted outbreak control'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this