Modeling infectious disease dynamics: Integrating contact tracing-based stochastic compartment and spatio-temporal risk models

Major infectious diseases such as COVID-19 have a significant impact on population lives and put enormous pressure on healthcare systems globally. Strong interventions, such as lockdowns and social distancing measures, imposed to prevent these diseases from spreading, may also negatively impact society, leading to jobs losses, mental health problems, and increased inequalities, making crucial the prioritization of riskier areas when applying these protocols. The modeling of mobility data derived from contact-tracing data can be used to forecast infectious trajectories and help design strategies for prevention and control. In this work, we propose a new spatial-stochastic model that allows us to characterize the temporally varying spatial risk better than existing methods. We demonstrate the use of the proposed model by simulating an epidemic in the city of Valencia, Spain, and comparing it with a contact tracing-based stochastic compartment reference model. The results show that, by accounting for the spatial risk values in the model, the peak of infected individuals, as well as the overall number of infected cases, are reduced. Therefore, adding a spatial risk component into compartment models may give finer control over the epidemic dynamics, which might help the people in charge to make better decisions.