Awareness-driven behavior changes can shift the shape of epidemics away from peaks and toward plateaus, shoulders, and oscillations

Weitz, Joshua S.; Park, Sang Woo; Eksin, Ceyhun; Dushoff, Jonathan

doi:10.1073/pnas.2009911117

Cited by 155 publications

(219 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

191

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We have focused on scenarios where NPIs are switched off in a step-wise manner, but even a more measured approach in which NPIs are gradually released over a period of many months does not prevent the worse effects (Supporting Information, Section S2). We stress that as hospitalisations and deaths increased we would expect both national legislation and emergent behaviour to limit the spread [21]. Therefore, our scenarios represent a pessimistic view of measures in response to a worsening outbreak.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: When can the UK relax about COVID-19?

Moore

Tildesley

Dyson

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SummaryBackgroundThe announcement of efficacious vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2 has been met with worldwide acclaim and relief. Many countries already have detailed plans for vaccine targeting based on minimising severe illness, death and healthcare burdens. Normally, relatively simple relationships between epidemiological parameters, vaccine efficacy and vaccine uptake predict the success of any immunisation programme. However, the dynamics of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is made more complex by age-dependent factors, changing levels of infection and the potential relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as the perceived risk declines.MethodsIn this study we use an age-structured mathematical model, matched to a range of epidemiological data in the UK, that also captures the roll-out of a two-dose vaccination programme targeted at specific age groups.FindingsWe consider the interaction between the UK vaccination programme and future relaxation (or removal) of NPIs. Our predictions highlight the population-level risks of early relaxation leading to a pronounced wave of infection, hospital admissions and deaths. Only vaccines that offer high infection-blocking efficacy with high uptake in the general population allow relaxation of NPIs without a huge surge in deaths.InterpretationWhile the novel vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 offer a potential exit strategy for this outbreak, this is highly contingent on the infection-blocking (or transmission-blocking) action of the vaccine and the population uptake, both of which need to be carefully monitored as vaccine programmes are rolled out in the UK and other countries.Research in contextEvidence before this studyVaccination has been seen as a key tool in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines already developed represent a major technological achievement and have been shown to generate significant immune responses, as well as offering considerable protection against disease. However, to date there is limited information on the degree of infection-blocking these vaccines are likely to induce. Mathematical models have already successfully been used to consider age- and risk-structured targeting of vaccination, highlighting the importance of prioritising older and high-risk individuals.Added value of this studyTranslating current knowledge and uncertainty of vaccine behaviour into meaningful public health messages requires models that fully capture the within-country epidemiology as well as the complex roll-out of a two-dose vaccination programme. We show that under reasonable assumptions for vaccine efficacy and uptake the UK is unlikely to reach herd immunity, which means that non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot be released without generating substantial waves of infection.Implications of all the available evidenceVaccination is likely to provide substantial individual protection to those receiving two doses, but the degree of protection to the wider population is still uncertain. While substantial immunisation of the most vulnerable groups will allow for some relaxation of controls, this must be done gradually to prevent large scale public health consequences.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: When can the UK relax about COVID-19?

Moore

Tildesley

Dyson

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The body of modeling work based on the SEIR scheme touches similar themes to those just mentioned, but due to the larger number of articles, there are also some new interesting angles. In particular, we find papers focusing, among other things, on the effects of face masks [82] , [85] , [86] , [87] , [89] , capturing different aspects of NPIs [64] , [67] , [69] , [70] , [71] , [73] , [74] , [75] , [77] , [79] , [80] , [81] , [83] , [84] , [90] , studying the problem of optimal control of the pandemic [72] , [76] , [78] , [88] , investigating approaches to lift measures put in place in the first wave [62] , [63] , [65] , model the possible exposure to the virus via droplets or fomites [91] , [92] , and consider the impact on the health care infrastructure of COVID-19 and seasonal flu in the winter [68] .…”

Section: Epidemic Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-pharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Infectious diseases and human behavior are intertwined. On one side, our movements and interactions are the engines of transmission. On the other, the unfolding of viruses might induce changes to our daily activities. While intuitive, our understanding of such feedback loop is still limited. Before COVID-19 the literature on the subject was mainly theoretical and largely missed validation. The main issue was the lack of empirical data capturing behavioral change induced by diseases. Things have dramatically changed in 2020. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been the key weapon against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and affected virtually any societal process. Travels bans, events cancellation, social distancing, curfews, and lockdowns have become unfortunately very familiar. The scale of the emergency, the ease of survey as well as crowdsourcing deployment guaranteed by the latest technology, several Data for Good programs developed by tech giants, major mobile phone providers, and other companies have allowed unprecedented access to data describing behavioral changes induced by the pandemic. Here, I review some of the vast literature written on the subject of NPIs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, I analyze 348 articles written by more than 2518 of authors in the first 12 months of the emergency. While the large majority of the sample was obtained by querying PubMed, it includes also a hand-curated list. Considering the focus, and methodology I have classified the sample into seven main categories: epidemic models, surveys, comments/perspectives, papers aiming to quantify the effects of NPIs, reviews, articles using data proxies to measure NPIs, and publicly available datasets describing NPIs. I summarize the methodology, data used, findings of the articles in each category and provide an outlook highlighting future challenges as well as opportunities.

show abstract

“…Reporting on the pandemic cannot be perceived only for its informative function. It is unknown what effect a constant reporting on the cases, casualties and containment methods could have on adherence to distancing rules or mental health 19,[35][36][37][38] . We employed sentiment analysis to study the large volume of identified COVID-19 articles by analyzing emotions they could evoke.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the online news media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Krawczyk

Chełkowski

Mishra

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundNon-pharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing have been the primary measures to effectively combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Such measures are highly effective when there is strong population wide adherence which needs to be facilitated by information on the current risks posed by the pandemic alongside a clear exposition of the rules and guidelines in place. Here we address the issue of communication on the pandemic by offering data and analysis of online news media coverage of COVID-19.MethodsWe collected 26 million news articles from the front pages of 172 major online news sources in 11 countries (available at http://sciride.org). Using topic detection we identified COVID-19-related content to quantify the proportion of total coverage pandemic received in 2020. Sentiment analysis tool Vader was employed to stratify the emotional polarity of COVID-19 reporting. Further topic detection and sentiment analysis was performed on COVID-19 articles to reveal the leading themes in pandemic reporting and their respective emotional polarizations.FindingsWe find that COVID-19 coverage accounted for approximately 25% of all front-page online news articles between January and October 2020. Sentiment analysis of English-speaking sources reveals that the overall COVID-19 coverage cannot be simply classified as negative due to the disease subject matter, suggesting a wide heterogeneous reporting of the pandemic. Within this heterogenous coverage, 16% of COVID-19 news articles (or 4% of all English-speaking articles) can be classified as highly negatively polarized, citing issues such as death, fear or crisis.InterpretationThe goal of pandemic public health communication is to increase understanding of distancing rules and maximize the impact of any governmental policy. Our results suggest an information overload in COVID-19 reporting that could risk obscuring effective policy communication. We hope that our data and analysis will inform health communication strategy to minimize the risks of COVID-19 while vaccination regimes are being introduced.

show abstract

Awareness-driven behavior changes can shift the shape of epidemics away from peaks and toward plateaus, shoulders, and oscillations

Cited by 155 publications

References 29 publications

Vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: When can the UK relax about COVID-19?

Vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: When can the UK relax about COVID-19?

Non-pharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review

Quantifying the online news media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About