Relative role of border restrictions, case finding and contact tracing in controlling SARS-CoV-2 in the presence of undetected transmission: a mathematical modelling study

BACKGROUND: Understanding the overall effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions to control the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce the burden of disease is crucial for future pandemic planning. However, quantifying the effectiveness of specific control measures and the extent of missed infections, in the absence of early large-scale serological surveys or random community testing, has remained challenging. METHODS: Combining data on notified local COVID-19 cases with known and unknown sources of infections in Singapore with a branching process model, we reconstructed the incidence of missed infections during the early phase of the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and Delta variant transmission. We then estimated the relative effectiveness of border control measures, case finding and contact tracing when there was no or low vaccine coverage in the population. We compared the risk of ICU admission and death between the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and the Delta variant in notified cases and all infections. RESULTS: We estimated strict border control measures were associated with 0.2 (95% credible intervals, CrI 0.04–0.8) missed imported infections per notified case between July and December 2020, a decline from around 1 missed imported infection per notified case in the early phases of the pandemic. Contact tracing was estimated to identify 78% (95% CrI 62–93%) of the secondary infections generated by notified cases before the partial lockdown in Apr 2020, but this declined to 63% (95% CrI 56–71%) during the lockdown and rebounded to 78% (95% CrI 58–94%) during reopening in Jul 2020. The contribution of contact tracing towards overall outbreak control also hinges on ability to find cases with unknown sources of infection: 42% (95% CrI 12–84%) of such cases were found prior to the lockdown; 10% (95% CrI 7–15%) during the lockdown; 47% (95% CrI 17–85%) during reopening, due to increased testing capacity and health-seeking behaviour. We estimated around 63% (95% CrI 49–78%) of the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 infections were undetected during 2020 and around 70% (95% CrI 49–91%) for the Delta variant in 2021. CONCLUSIONS: Combining models with case linkage data enables evaluation of the effectiveness of different components of outbreak control measures, and provides more reliable situational awareness when some cases are missed. Using such approaches for early identification of the weakest link in containment efforts could help policy makers to better redirect limited resources to strengthen outbreak control. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-023-02802-0.