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The outbreak of COVID-19 stimulated a new round of discussion on how to deal with respiratory infectious diseases. Influenza viruses have led to several pandemics worldwide. The spatiotemporal characteristics of influenza transmission in modern cities, especially megacities, are not well-known, which increases the difficulty of influenza prevention and control for populous urban areas. For a long time, influenza prevention and control measures have focused on vaccination of the elderly and children, and school closure. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the public's awareness of measures such as vaccinations, mask-wearing, and home-quarantine has generally increased in some regions of the world. To control the influenza epidemic and reduce the proportion of infected people with high mortality, the combination of these three measures needs quantitative evaluation based on the spatiotemporal transmission characteristics of influenza in megacities. Given that the agent-based model with both demographic attributes and fine-grained mobility is a key planning tool in deploying intervention strategies, this study proposes a spatially explicit agent-based influenza model for assessing and recommending the combinations of influenza control measures. This study considers Shenzhen city, China as the research area. First, a spatially explicit agent-based influenza transmission model was developed by integrating large-scale individual trajectory data and human response behavior. Then, the model was evaluated across multiple intra-urban spatial scales based on confirmed influenza cases. Finally, the model was used to evaluate the combined effects of the three interventions (V: vaccinations, M: mask-wearing, and Q: home-quarantining) under different compliance rates, and their optimal combinations for given control objectives were recommended. This study reveals that adults were a high-risk population with a low reporting rate, and children formed the lowest infected proportion and had the highest reporting rate in Shenzhen. In addition, this study systematically recommended different combinations of vaccinations, mask-wearing, and home-quarantine with different compliance rates for different control objectives to deal with the influenza epidemic. For example, the "V45%-M60%-Q20%" strategy can maintain the infection percentage below 5%, while the "V20%-M60%-Q20%" strategy can maintain the infection percentage below 15%. The model and policy recommendations from this study provide a tool and intervention reference for influenza epidemic management in the post-COVID-19 era., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor WL declared a past co-authorship with the authors LY, TC, SF, HZ, and KL., (Copyright © 2022 Zhang, Yin, Mao, Mei, Chen, Liu and Feng.)

Before herd immunity against Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is achieved by mass vaccination, science-based guidelines for non-pharmaceutical interventions are urgently needed to reopen megacities. This study integrated massive mobile phone tracking records, census data and building characteristics into a spatially explicit agent-based model to simulate COVID-19 spread among 11.2 million individuals living in Shenzhen City, China. After validation by local epidemiological observations, the model was used to assess the probability of COVID-19 resurgence if sporadic cases occurred in a fully reopened city. Combined scenarios of three critical non-pharmaceutical interventions (contact tracing, mask wearing and prompt testing) were assessed at various levels of public compliance. Our results show a greater than 50% chance of disease resurgence if the city reopened without contact tracing. However, tracing household contacts, in combination with mandatory mask use and prompt testing, could suppress the probability of resurgence under 5% within four weeks. If household contact tracing could be expanded to work/class group members, the COVID resurgence could be avoided if 80% of the population wear facemasks and 40% comply with prompt testing. Our assessment, including modelling for different scenarios, helps public health practitioners tailor interventions within Shenzhen City and other world megacities under a variety of suppression timelines, risk tolerance, healthcare capacity and public compliance.