Danon et al. Covid-19 transmission in England
Authors used preexisted spatial metapopulation model[1] to describe population movement between regions in England and Whales and standard SEIR model to describe Covid-19 spread in each particular region[2].
Total of 8,570 regions (or wards) were introduced.
Model parameters were randomly distributed according to experimental data acquired for Wuhan[3]:
| Parameter | Distribution |
|---|---|
| Incubation period | lognorm(meanlog=log(5.2),sdlog=0.35) |
| Reproduction number | gamma(scale=2.2/100,shape=100) |
| Infectious period | uniform(2, 3) |
Seasonal changes in epidemic spread are also investigated by using varying transmission rate, namely it is considered to be lower in summer. Seasonality is shown to have large impact on epidemic timing.
Model predicts that a CoVID-19 outbreak will peak 126 to 147 days (~4 months) after the start of person-to-person transmission in England and Wales in the absence of controls, assuming biological parameters remain unchanged. Therefore, if person-to-person transmission persists from February, authors predict the epidemic peak would occur in June.
One limitation of the model is that it does not consider mortality.
Model was implemented using C programming language and is available at github.
References
- ↑ Danon L, House T, Keeling M. The role of routine versus random movements on the spread of disease in Great Britain. Epidemics [Internet]. 2009; Available from: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1755436509000553
- ↑ Danon L., Brooks-Pollock E., Bailey M., Keeling M. A spatial model of CoVID-19 transmission in England and Wales: early spread and peak timing // medRxiv preprint 2020. doi:https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022566
- ↑ Li Q, Guan X, Wu P, Wang X, Zhou L, Tong Y, et al. Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel oronavirus–Infected Pneumonia. N Engl J Med. 2020
