Measuring social contact at fine-scales to assess the joint impact of vaccination and physical distancing on COVID-19 mitigation
Topics: Medical and Health Geography
, Temporal GIS
, Applied Geography
Keywords: COVID-19, social contact, mobility, SEIR
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 27
Authors:
Bo Huang, Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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Abstract
COVID-19 resurgences worldwide have posed significant challenges to the implementation of preventive interventions, especially given the physical distancing fatigue post-lockdown and the uncertain efficacy of future vaccines. However, the effects of social contact on infections caused by mobility restoration and their interactions with upcoming vaccines are still unclear. Using anonymized mobile geolocation data in China, we devised a mobility-associated social contact index to quantify the combined impact of physical distancing and vaccination measures under various population density scenarios. This index explained 90% of the variance in the changing reproduction number of infections across the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, and its corresponding metric was applied to six other cities of varying population densities with consistent validity. Our simulations also revealed that physical distancing measures should continue to be implemented as a response to resurgences until the herd immunity threshold is achieved. We found that compared with the no-vaccination scenario, vaccination combined with physical distancing can contain resurgences without relying on mobility reduction, whereas a gradual vaccination process alone cannot achieve this. Further, for cities with medium-population density, vaccination can shorten the duration of physical distancing by 36%-78%, whereas for cities with high-population density, it can lower the minimally required intensity of interventions and achieve better efficacy in reducing the number of new infections. These findings improve our understanding of the joint effect of vaccination and physical distancing on COVID-19 transmission and inform public response efforts worldwide.
Measuring social contact at fine-scales to assess the joint impact of vaccination and physical distancing on COVID-19 mitigation
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
Description
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