Key info
Date:
17 September 2020 (updated on 07-01-2021)
Authors:
Mélodie Monod, Alexandra Blenkinsop, Xiaoyue Xi, Daniel Hebert, Sivan Bershan, Simon Tietze, Marc Baguelin, Valerie C Bradley, Yu Chen, Helen Coupland, Sarah Filippi, Jonathan Ish-Horowicz, Martin McManus, Thomas Mellan, Axel Gandy, Michael Hutchinson, H Juliette T Unwin, Sabine L van Elsland, Michaela A C Vollmer, Sebastian Weber, Harrison Zhu, Anne Bezancon, Neil M Ferguson, Swapnil Mishra, Seth Flaxman1, Samir Bhatt1, and Oliver Ratmann1, on behalf of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team
1Correspondence:
oliver.ratmann@imperial.ac.uk,
s.bhatt@imperial.ac.uk and
s.flaxman@imperial.ac.uk
Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team
Kylie E C Ainslie, Marc Baguelin, Adhiratha Boonyasiri, Olivia Boyd, Lorenzo Cattarino, Laura V Cooper, Zulma Cucunub, Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg, Bimandra Djaafara, Ilaria Dorigatti, Sabine L van Elsland, Richard FitzJohn, Katy A M Gaythorpe, Lily Geidelberg, William D. Green, Arran Hamlet, Wes Hinsley, Ben Jeffrey, Edward Knock, Daniel Laydon, Gemma Nedjati-Gilani, Pierre Nouvellet, Kris V Parag, Igor Siveroni, Hayley A Thompson, Robert Verity, Caroline E. Walters, Haowei Wang, Yuanrong Wang, Oliver J Watson, Peter Winskill, Charles Whittaker, Patrick GT Walker, Christl A. Donnelly, Lucy Okell, Sangeeta Bhatia, Nicholas F. Brazeau, Oliver D Eales, David Haw, Natsuko Imai, Elita Jauneikaite, John Lees, Andria Mousa, Daniela Olivera, Janetta Skarp, Lilith Whittles
WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA), Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, in collaboration with Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Foursquare Inc., Emodo Inc., Novartis Pharma AG.
Now published in Science; 02-02-2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe8372
Summary
Summary report version 2 (07-01-2020)
Following initial declines, in mid 2020 a resurgence in transmission of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) occurred in the US and Europe. As COVID-19 disease control becomes more localised, understanding the age demographics driving transmission and how these affect the loosening of interventions is crucial. We analyse aggregated, age-specific mobility trends from more than 10 million individuals in the US and linked these mechanistically to age-specific COVID-19 mortality data. We estimate that as of October 2020, individuals aged 20-49 are the only age groups sustaining resurgent SARS-CoV-2 transmission with reproduction numbers well above one, and that at least 65 of 100 COVID-19 infections originate from individuals aged 20-49 in the US. Targeting interventions to adults aged 20-49 is an important consideration in halting resurgent epidemics and preventing COVID-19-attributable deaths.
Summary (17-09-2020)
Following initial declines, in mid 2020, a resurgence in transmission of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has occurred in the United States and parts of Europe. Despite the wide implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions, it is still not known how they are impacted by changing contact patterns, age and other demographics. As COVID-19 disease control becomes more localised, understanding the age demographics driving transmission and how these impacts the loosening of interventions such as school reopening is crucial. Considering dynamics for the United States, we analyse aggregated, age-specific mobility trends from more than 10 million individuals and link these mechanistically to age-specific COVID-19 mortality data. In contrast to previous approaches, we link mobility to mortality via age specific contact patterns and use this rich relationship to reconstruct accurate transmission dynamics. Contrary to anecdotal evidence, we find little support for age-shifts in contact and transmission dynamics over time. We estimate that, until August, 63.4% [60.9%-65.5%] of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States originated from adults aged 20-49, while 1.2% [0.8%-1.8%] originated from children aged 0-9. In areas with continued, community-wide transmission, our transmission model predicts that re-opening kindergartens and elementary schools could facilitate spread and lead to additional COVID-19 attributable deaths over a 90-day period. These findings indicate that targeting interventions to adults aged 20-49 are an important consideration in halting resurgent epidemics and preventing COVID-19-attributable deaths when kindergartens and elementary schools reopen.
Code and data: https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/covid19model.
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