Effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions against local transmission of COVID-19: An individual-based modelling study

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused global transmission, and been spread all over the world. For those regions that are currently free of infected cases, it is an urgent issue to prevent and control the local outbreak of COVID-19 when there are sporadic cases. To evaluate the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions against local transmission of COVID-19, and to forecast the epidemic dynamics after local outbreak of diseases under different control measures, we developed an individual-based model (IBM) to simulate the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 from a microscopic perspective of individual-to-individual contacts to heterogenous among individuals. Based on the model, we simulated the effects of different levels of non-pharmaceutical interventions in controlling disease transmission after the appearance of sporadic cases. Simulations shown that isolation of infected cases and quarantine of close contacts alone would not eliminate the local transmission of COVID-19, and there is a risk of a second wave epidemics. Quarantine the second-layer close contacts can obviously reduce the size of outbreak. Moreover, to effectively eliminate the daily new infections in a short time, it is necessary to reduce the individual-to-individual contacts. IBM provides a numerical representation for the local transmission of infectious diseases, and extends the compartmental models to include individual heterogeneity and the close contacts network. Our study suggests that combinations of self-isolation, quarantine of close contacts, and social distancing would be necessary to block the local transmission of COVID-19.