Abstract
Abstract Family feasting during the Spring Festival is a Chinese tradition. However, close contact during this period is likely to promote the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study developed a dynamic infectious disease model in which the feast gatherings of families were considered the sole mode of transmission. The model simulates COVID-19 transmission via family feast gatherings through a social contact network. First, a kinship-based, virtual social contact network was constructed, with nodes representing families and connections representing kinships. Families in kinship with each other comprised of the largest globally coupled network, also known as a clique, in which a feast gathering was generated by randomly selecting two or more families willing to gather. The social contact network in the model comprised of 215 cliques formed among 608 families with 1517 family members. The modelling results indicated that when there is only one patient on day 0, the number of new infections will reach a peak on day 29, and almost all families and their members in the social contact network will be infected by day 60. This study demonstrated that COVID-19 can spread rapidly through continuous feast gatherings through social contact networks and that the disease will run rampant throughout the network.
Highlights
The 7 days at the beginning of each year is the Spring Festival which is the most important traditional festival in China
Without these control measures during the 2020 Spring Festival, the pandemic would likely have evolved into an uncontrollable situation because of traditional family feast gatherings taking place instead of home-based quarantine
Questions arose regarding whether continuous feast gatherings throughout society would lead to a marked spread of the pandemic and what situation would have arisen if feast gatherings had been allowed during the 2020 Spring Festival
Summary
The 7 days at the beginning of each year is the Spring Festival which is the most important traditional festival in China. During the Spring Festival of 2020 and the subsequent 2 months, a series of strict nationwide control measures led to effective containment of the pandemic by the end of March 2020 [2–4] Without these control measures during the 2020 Spring Festival, the pandemic would likely have evolved into an uncontrollable situation because of traditional family feast gatherings taking place instead of home-based quarantine. Several COVID-19 infection events caused by feast gatherings in China occurred in many provinces during the Spring Festival in 2020, with some feast gatherings considered superspreader events [5–7]. This indicated that feast gatherings obviously promote the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. A dynamic infectious disease model is needed to gain deeper insights regarding these issues
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