Limited impact of contact tracing in a University setting for COVID-19 due to asymptomatic transmission and social distancing

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Contact tracing is an important tool for controlling the spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Here, we investigate the spread of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of contact tracing in a university population, using a data-driven ego-centric network model constructed with social contact data collected during 2020 and similar data collected in 2010. We find that during 2020, university staff and students consistently reported fewer social contacts than in 2010, however those contacts occurred more frequently and were of longer duration. We find that contact tracing in the presence of social distancing is less impactful than without social distancing. By combining multiple data sources, we show that University-aged populations are likely to develop asymptomatic COVID19 infections. We find that asymptomatic index cases cannot be reliably discovered through contact tracing and consequently transmission in their social network is not significantly reduced through contact tracing. In summary, social distancing restrictions had a large impact on limiting COVID-19 outbreaks in universities; to reduce transmission further contact tracing should be used in conjunction with alternative interventions.
Original languageEnglish
Article number100716
JournalEpidemics
Volume45
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
EBP would like to acknowledge support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at the University of Bristol. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. EBP, EN and DS are supported by UKRI through the JUNIPER consortium (Grant Number MR/V038613/1 ). EBP is further supported by Medical Research Council ( MRC ) (Grant Number MC/PC/19067 ). AT is funded by the Wellcome Trust through his Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023

Research Groups and Themes

  • Engineering Mathematics Research Group

Keywords

  • social contact
  • epidemic
  • infectious disease
  • contact tracing
  • survey
  • asymptomatic

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