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Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on March 11th, 2020. With half of the world's countries in lockdown as of April due to this pandemic, monitoring and understanding the spread of the virus and infection rates and how these factors relate to behavioural and...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Li, Kelvin K.F., Jarvis, Stephen A., Minhas, Fayyaz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8019252/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33915478
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104369
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author Li, Kelvin K.F.
Jarvis, Stephen A.
Minhas, Fayyaz
author_facet Li, Kelvin K.F.
Jarvis, Stephen A.
Minhas, Fayyaz
author_sort Li, Kelvin K.F.
collection PubMed
description COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on March 11th, 2020. With half of the world's countries in lockdown as of April due to this pandemic, monitoring and understanding the spread of the virus and infection rates and how these factors relate to behavioural and societal parameters is crucial for developing control strategies. This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of masks, social distancing, lockdown and self-isolation for reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Our findings from an agent-based simulation modelling showed that whilst requiring a lockdown is widely believed to be the most efficient method to quickly reduce infection numbers, the practice of social distancing and the usage of surgical masks can potentially be more effective than requiring a lockdown. Our multivariate analysis of simulation results using the Morris Elementary Effects Method suggests that if a sufficient proportion of the population uses surgical masks and follows social distancing regulations, then SARS-CoV-2 infections can be controlled without requiring a lockdown.
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spelling pubmed-80192522021-04-06 Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage Li, Kelvin K.F. Jarvis, Stephen A. Minhas, Fayyaz Comput Biol Med Article COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on March 11th, 2020. With half of the world's countries in lockdown as of April due to this pandemic, monitoring and understanding the spread of the virus and infection rates and how these factors relate to behavioural and societal parameters is crucial for developing control strategies. This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of masks, social distancing, lockdown and self-isolation for reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Our findings from an agent-based simulation modelling showed that whilst requiring a lockdown is widely believed to be the most efficient method to quickly reduce infection numbers, the practice of social distancing and the usage of surgical masks can potentially be more effective than requiring a lockdown. Our multivariate analysis of simulation results using the Morris Elementary Effects Method suggests that if a sufficient proportion of the population uses surgical masks and follows social distancing regulations, then SARS-CoV-2 infections can be controlled without requiring a lockdown. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-07 2021-04-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8019252/ /pubmed/33915478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104369 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Li, Kelvin K.F.
Jarvis, Stephen A.
Minhas, Fayyaz
Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
title Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
title_full Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
title_fullStr Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
title_full_unstemmed Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
title_short Elementary effects analysis of factors controlling COVID-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
title_sort elementary effects analysis of factors controlling covid-19 infections in computational simulation reveals the importance of social distancing and mask usage
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8019252/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33915478
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104369
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