Journal article
Interventions targeting non-symptomatic cases can be important to prevent local outbreaks: SARS-CoV-2 as a case study
- Abstract:
- During infectious disease epidemics, an important question is whether cases travelling to new locations will trigger local outbreaks. The risk of this occurring depends on the transmissibility of the pathogen, the susceptibility of the host population and, crucially, the effectiveness of surveillance in detecting cases and preventing onward spread. For many pathogens, transmission from pre-symptomatic and/or asymptomatic (together referred to as non-symptomatic) infectious hosts can occur, making effective surveillance challenging. Here, by using SARS-CoV-2 as a case study, we show how the risk of local outbreaks can be assessed when non-symptomatic transmission can occur. We construct a branching process model that includes non-symptomatic transmission and explore the effects of interventions targeting non-symptomatic or symptomatic hosts when surveillance resources are limited. We consider whether the greatest reductions in local outbreak risks are achieved by increasing surveillance and control targeting non-symptomatic or symptomatic cases, or a combination of both. We find that seeking to increase surveillance of symptomatic hosts alone is typically not the optimal strategy for reducing outbreak risks. Adopting a strategy that combines an enhancement of surveillance of symptomatic cases with efforts to find and isolate non-symptomatic infected hosts leads to the largest reduction in the probability that imported cases will initiate a local outbreak.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, 897.6KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1098/rsif.2020.1014
Authors
- Publisher:
- Royal Society, The
- Journal:
- Journal of the Royal Society Interface More from this journal
- Volume:
- 18
- Issue:
- 178
- Article number:
- 20201014
- Publication date:
- 2021-05-19
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-04-20
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1742-5662
- ISSN:
-
1742-5689
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1173049
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1173049
- Deposit date:
-
2021-04-23
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Lovell-Read et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © 2021 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record