Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs
Traditional contact tracing tests the direct contacts of those who test positive. But, by the time an infected individual is tested, the infection starting from the person may have infected a chain of individuals. Hence, why should the testing stop at direct contacts, and not test secondary, tertiar...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Royal Society
2022-10-01
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| Series: | Royal Society Open Science |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211927 |
| _version_ | 1797845323619500032 |
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| author | Jungyeol Kim Xingran Chen Hesam Nikpey Harvey Rubin Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti Saswati Sarkar |
| author_facet | Jungyeol Kim Xingran Chen Hesam Nikpey Harvey Rubin Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti Saswati Sarkar |
| author_sort | Jungyeol Kim |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Traditional contact tracing tests the direct contacts of those who test positive. But, by the time an infected individual is tested, the infection starting from the person may have infected a chain of individuals. Hence, why should the testing stop at direct contacts, and not test secondary, tertiary contacts or even contacts further down? One deterrent in testing long chains of individuals right away may be that it substantially increases the testing load, or does it? We investigate the costs and benefits of such multi-hop contact tracing for different number of hops. Considering diverse contact networks, we show that the cost–benefit trade-off can be characterized in terms of a single measurable attribute, the initial epidemic growth rate. Once this growth rate crosses a threshold, multi-hop contact tracing substantially reduces the outbreak size compared with traditional tracing. Multi-hop even incurs a lower cost compared with the traditional tracing for a large range of values of the growth rate. The cost–benefit trade-offs can be classified into three phases depending on the value of the growth rate. The need for choosing a larger number of hops becomes greater as the growth rate increases or the environment becomes less conducive toward containing the disease. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-09T17:37:11Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-48c9610682c543c5887a397fe5c24af4 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2054-5703 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-09T17:37:11Z |
| publishDate | 2022-10-01 |
| publisher | The Royal Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Royal Society Open Science |
| spelling | doaj.art-48c9610682c543c5887a397fe5c24af42023-04-17T11:00:59ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032022-10-0191010.1098/rsos.211927Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offsJungyeol Kim0Xingran Chen1Hesam Nikpey2Harvey Rubin3Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti4Saswati Sarkar5Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USADepartment of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USADepartment of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USADepartment of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USADepartment of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USADepartment of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USATraditional contact tracing tests the direct contacts of those who test positive. But, by the time an infected individual is tested, the infection starting from the person may have infected a chain of individuals. Hence, why should the testing stop at direct contacts, and not test secondary, tertiary contacts or even contacts further down? One deterrent in testing long chains of individuals right away may be that it substantially increases the testing load, or does it? We investigate the costs and benefits of such multi-hop contact tracing for different number of hops. Considering diverse contact networks, we show that the cost–benefit trade-off can be characterized in terms of a single measurable attribute, the initial epidemic growth rate. Once this growth rate crosses a threshold, multi-hop contact tracing substantially reduces the outbreak size compared with traditional tracing. Multi-hop even incurs a lower cost compared with the traditional tracing for a large range of values of the growth rate. The cost–benefit trade-offs can be classified into three phases depending on the value of the growth rate. The need for choosing a larger number of hops becomes greater as the growth rate increases or the environment becomes less conducive toward containing the disease.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211927disease dynamicscontact tracingcost–benefit trade-offCOVID-19large-scale contact networks |
| spellingShingle | Jungyeol Kim Xingran Chen Hesam Nikpey Harvey Rubin Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti Saswati Sarkar Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs Royal Society Open Science disease dynamics contact tracing cost–benefit trade-off COVID-19 large-scale contact networks |
| title | Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs |
| title_full | Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs |
| title_fullStr | Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs |
| title_full_unstemmed | Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs |
| title_short | Tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to COVID-19 cases: cost–benefit trade-offs |
| title_sort | tracing and testing multiple generations of contacts to covid 19 cases cost benefit trade offs |
| topic | disease dynamics contact tracing cost–benefit trade-off COVID-19 large-scale contact networks |
| url | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211927 |
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