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A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies

BACKGROUND: In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, several countries adopted measures of social distancing to a different degree. For many countries, after successfully curbing the initial wave, lockdown measures were gradually lifted. In Belgium, such relief started on May 4th with phase 1,...

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Autores principales: Coletti, Pietro, Libin, Pieter, Petrof, Oana, Willem, Lander, Abrams, Steven, Herzog, Sereina A., Faes, Christel, Kuylen, Elise, Wambua, James, Beutels, Philippe, Hens, Niel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164894/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34053446
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-06092-w
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author Coletti, Pietro
Libin, Pieter
Petrof, Oana
Willem, Lander
Abrams, Steven
Herzog, Sereina A.
Faes, Christel
Kuylen, Elise
Wambua, James
Beutels, Philippe
Hens, Niel
author_facet Coletti, Pietro
Libin, Pieter
Petrof, Oana
Willem, Lander
Abrams, Steven
Herzog, Sereina A.
Faes, Christel
Kuylen, Elise
Wambua, James
Beutels, Philippe
Hens, Niel
author_sort Coletti, Pietro
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, several countries adopted measures of social distancing to a different degree. For many countries, after successfully curbing the initial wave, lockdown measures were gradually lifted. In Belgium, such relief started on May 4th with phase 1, followed by several subsequent phases over the next few weeks. METHODS: We analysed the expected impact of relaxing stringent lockdown measures taken according to the phased Belgian exit strategy. We developed a stochastic, data-informed, meta-population model that accounts for mixing and mobility of the age-structured population of Belgium. The model is calibrated to daily hospitalization data and is able to reproduce the outbreak at the national level. We consider different scenarios for relieving the lockdown, quantified in terms of relative reductions in pre-pandemic social mixing and mobility. We validate our assumptions by making comparisons with social contact data collected during and after the lockdown. RESULTS: Our model is able to successfully describe the initial wave of COVID-19 in Belgium and identifies interactions during leisure/other activities as pivotal in the exit strategy. Indeed, we find a smaller impact of school re-openings as compared to restarting leisure activities and re-openings of work places. We also assess the impact of case isolation of new (suspected) infections, and find that it allows re-establishing relatively more social interactions while still ensuring epidemic control. Scenarios predicting a second wave of hospitalizations were not observed, suggesting that the per-contact probability of infection has changed with respect to the pre-lockdown period. CONCLUSIONS: Contacts during leisure activities are found to be most influential, followed by professional contacts and school contacts, respectively, for an impending second wave of COVID-19. Regular re-assessment of social contacts in the population is therefore crucial to adjust to evolving behavioral changes that can affect epidemic diffusion. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at (10.1186/s12879-021-06092-w).
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spelling pubmed-81648942021-06-01 A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies Coletti, Pietro Libin, Pieter Petrof, Oana Willem, Lander Abrams, Steven Herzog, Sereina A. Faes, Christel Kuylen, Elise Wambua, James Beutels, Philippe Hens, Niel BMC Infect Dis Research Article BACKGROUND: In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, several countries adopted measures of social distancing to a different degree. For many countries, after successfully curbing the initial wave, lockdown measures were gradually lifted. In Belgium, such relief started on May 4th with phase 1, followed by several subsequent phases over the next few weeks. METHODS: We analysed the expected impact of relaxing stringent lockdown measures taken according to the phased Belgian exit strategy. We developed a stochastic, data-informed, meta-population model that accounts for mixing and mobility of the age-structured population of Belgium. The model is calibrated to daily hospitalization data and is able to reproduce the outbreak at the national level. We consider different scenarios for relieving the lockdown, quantified in terms of relative reductions in pre-pandemic social mixing and mobility. We validate our assumptions by making comparisons with social contact data collected during and after the lockdown. RESULTS: Our model is able to successfully describe the initial wave of COVID-19 in Belgium and identifies interactions during leisure/other activities as pivotal in the exit strategy. Indeed, we find a smaller impact of school re-openings as compared to restarting leisure activities and re-openings of work places. We also assess the impact of case isolation of new (suspected) infections, and find that it allows re-establishing relatively more social interactions while still ensuring epidemic control. Scenarios predicting a second wave of hospitalizations were not observed, suggesting that the per-contact probability of infection has changed with respect to the pre-lockdown period. CONCLUSIONS: Contacts during leisure activities are found to be most influential, followed by professional contacts and school contacts, respectively, for an impending second wave of COVID-19. Regular re-assessment of social contacts in the population is therefore crucial to adjust to evolving behavioral changes that can affect epidemic diffusion. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at (10.1186/s12879-021-06092-w). BioMed Central 2021-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8164894/ /pubmed/34053446 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-06092-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Coletti, Pietro
Libin, Pieter
Petrof, Oana
Willem, Lander
Abrams, Steven
Herzog, Sereina A.
Faes, Christel
Kuylen, Elise
Wambua, James
Beutels, Philippe
Hens, Niel
A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
title A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
title_full A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
title_fullStr A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
title_full_unstemmed A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
title_short A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
title_sort data-driven metapopulation model for the belgian covid-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164894/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34053446
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-06092-w
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