The epidemiological footprint of contact structures in models with two levels of mixing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bansaye, Vincent, Deslandes, François, Kubasch, Madeleine, Vergu, Elisabeta
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Bansaye, Vincent
Deslandes, François
Kubasch, Madeleine
Vergu, Elisabeta
author_facet Bansaye, Vincent
Deslandes, François
Kubasch, Madeleine
Vergu, Elisabeta
contents Models with several levels of mixing (households, workplaces), as well as various corresponding formulations for R0, have been proposed in the literature. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of the distribution of the population size within social structures, effect that can help plan effective interventions. We focus on the influence on the model outcomes of teleworking strategies, consisting in reshaping the distribution of workplace sizes. We consider a stochastic SIR model with two levels of mixing, accounting for a uniformly mixing general population, each individual belonging also to a household and a workplace. The variance of the workplace size distribution appears to be a good proxy for the impact of this distribution on key outcomes of the epidemic, such as epidemic size and peak. In particular, our findings suggest that strategies where the proportion of individuals teleworking depends sublinearly on the size of the workplace outperform the strategy with linear dependence. Besides, one drawback of the model with multiple levels of mixing is its complexity, raising interest in a reduced model. We propose a homogeneously mixing SIR ODE-based model, whose infection rate is chosen as to observe the growth rate of the initial model. This reduced model yields a generally satisfying approximation of the epidemic. These results, robust to various changes in model structure, are very promising from the perspective of implementing effective strategies based on social distancing of specific contacts. Furthermore, they contribute to the effort of building relevant approximations of individual based models at intermediate scales.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2303_05287
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The epidemiological footprint of contact structures in models with two levels of mixing
Bansaye, Vincent
Deslandes, François
Kubasch, Madeleine
Vergu, Elisabeta
Physics and Society
Populations and Evolution
Models with several levels of mixing (households, workplaces), as well as various corresponding formulations for R0, have been proposed in the literature. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of the distribution of the population size within social structures, effect that can help plan effective interventions. We focus on the influence on the model outcomes of teleworking strategies, consisting in reshaping the distribution of workplace sizes. We consider a stochastic SIR model with two levels of mixing, accounting for a uniformly mixing general population, each individual belonging also to a household and a workplace. The variance of the workplace size distribution appears to be a good proxy for the impact of this distribution on key outcomes of the epidemic, such as epidemic size and peak. In particular, our findings suggest that strategies where the proportion of individuals teleworking depends sublinearly on the size of the workplace outperform the strategy with linear dependence. Besides, one drawback of the model with multiple levels of mixing is its complexity, raising interest in a reduced model. We propose a homogeneously mixing SIR ODE-based model, whose infection rate is chosen as to observe the growth rate of the initial model. This reduced model yields a generally satisfying approximation of the epidemic. These results, robust to various changes in model structure, are very promising from the perspective of implementing effective strategies based on social distancing of specific contacts. Furthermore, they contribute to the effort of building relevant approximations of individual based models at intermediate scales.
title The epidemiological footprint of contact structures in models with two levels of mixing
topic Physics and Society
Populations and Evolution
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.05287