Real-time COVID-19 forecasting: challenges and opportunities of model performance and translation

A case for ongoing structural support to maximise infectious disease modelling efficiency for future public health emergencies: A modelling perspective

This short communication reflects upon the challenges and recommendations of multiple COVID-19 modelling and data analytic groups that provided quantitative evidence to support health policy discussions in Switzerland and Germany during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Capacity strengthening outside infectious disease emergencies will be required to enable an environment for a timely, efficient, and data-driven response to support decisions during any future infectious disease emergency. This will require 1) a critical mass of trained experts who continuously advance state-of-the-art methodological tools, 2) the establishment of structural liaisons amongst scientists and decision-makers, and 3) the foundation and management of data-sharing frameworks.

Scalable Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Augment Public Health Activities During Epidemic Peaks

OBJECTIVE

Scalable strategies to reduce the time burden and increase contact tracing efficiency are crucial during early waves and peaks of infectious transmission.

DESIGN

We enrolled a cohort of SARS-CoV-2-positive seed cases into a peer recruitment study testing social network methodology and a novel electronic platform to increase contact tracing efficiency.

SETTING

Index cases were recruited from an academic medical center and requested to recruit their local social contacts for enrollment and SARS-CoV-2 testing.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 509 adult participants enrolled over 19 months (384 seed cases and 125 social peers).

INTERVENTION

Participants completed a survey and were then eligible to recruit their social contacts with unique "coupons" for enrollment. Peer participants were eligible for SARS-CoV-2 and respiratory pathogen screening.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

The main outcome measures were the percentage of tests administered through the study that identified new SARS-CoV-2 cases, the feasibility of deploying the platform and the peer recruitment strategy, the perceived acceptability of the platform and the peer recruitment strategy, and the scalability of both during pandemic peaks.

RESULTS

After development and deployment, few human resources were needed to maintain the platform and enroll participants, regardless of peaks. Platform acceptability was high. Percent positivity tracked with other testing programs in the area.

CONCLUSIONS

An electronic platform may be a suitable tool to augment public health contact tracing activities by allowing participants to select an online platform for contact tracing rather than sitting for an interview.

MAM: Flexible Monte-Carlo Agent based Model for Modelling COVID-19 Spread

In the three years since SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in China, hundreds of millions of people have been infected and millions have died. Along with the immediate need for treatment solutions, the COVID-19 epidemic has reinforced the need for mathematical models that can predict the spread of the pandemic in an ever-changing environment. The susceptible-infectious-removed (SIR) model has been widely used to model COVID-19 transmission, however, with limited success. Here, we present a novel, dynamic Monte-Carlo Agent-based Model (MAM), which is based on the basic principles of statistical physics. Using public aggregative data from Israel on three major outbreaks, we compare predictions made by SIR and MAM, and show that MAM outperforms SIR in all aspects. Furthermore, MAM is a flexible model and allows to accurately examine the effects of vaccinations in different subgroups, and the effects of the introduction of new variants.