Abstract
Targeted contact-tracing through mobile phone apps has been proposed as an instrument to help contain the spread of COVID-19 and manage the lifting of nation-wide lock-downs currently in place in USA and Europe. However, there is an ongoing debate on its potential efficacy, especially in light of region-specific demographics. We built an expanded SIR model of COVID-19 epidemics that accounts for region-specific population densities, and we used it to test the impact of a contact-tracing app in a number of scenarios. Using demographic and mobility data from Italy and Spain, we used the model to simulate scenarios that vary in baseline contact rates, population densities, and fraction of app users in the population. Our results show that, in support of efficient isolation of symptomatic cases, app-mediated contact-tracing can successfully mitigate the epidemic even with a relatively small fraction of users, and even suppress altogether with a larger fraction of users. However, when regional differences in population density are taken into consideration, the epidemic can be significantly harder to contain in higher density areas, highlighting potential limitations of this intervention in specific contexts. This work corroborates previous results in favor of app-mediated contact-tracing as mitigation measure for COVID-19, and draws attention on the importance of region-specific demographic and mobility factors to achieve maximum efficacy in containment policies.
Highlights
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a novel coronavirus strain, discovered in 2019, responsible of a severe respiratory illness named Coronavirus Disease 2019(COVID-19) that has been declared a public health emergency since January 2020
As Italy was the first western country affected by the SARS-CoV-2 and for which region-specific and intervention-related data was readily available, our analysis is focused on the Italian case
The use of targeted app for contact tracing has been proposed as a means to control the COVID-19 epidemics when lockdown measures are lifted
Summary
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a novel coronavirus strain, discovered in 2019, responsible of a severe respiratory illness named Coronavirus Disease 2019(COVID-19) that has been declared a public health emergency since January 2020. The spread of COVID-19 has raised new challenges for healthcare systems all over the world, hitting with particular strength Europe and USA, after China. The spread of COVID-19 has been quite heterogeneous in speed, reach, and lethality, from country to country, and in different regions of the same country. The main possible explanation is given by the delay between the onset of the epidemic, the first diagnosis, and the kick-off of containment measures. Other reasons may be due to region-specific variables, such as population density and mean age, societal structure, and behaviors. A third factor depends on the adopted policies for containment and testing, in particular for what concerns the fraction of infectious individuals that never display symptoms (asymptomatic)
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