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The spreading of SARS-CoV-2: Interage contacts and networks degree distribution
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 8, p e0256036 (2021), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2021.
-
Abstract
- Notable cross-country differences exist in the diffusion of the Covid-19 and in its lethality. Contact patterns in populations, and in particular intergenerational contacts, have been argued to be responsible for the most vulnerable, the elderly, getting infected more often and thus driving up mortality in some context, like in the southern European one. This paper asks a simple question: is it between whom contacts occur that matters or is it simply how many contacts people have? Due to the high number of confounding factors, it is extremely difficult to empirically assess the impact of single network features separately. This is why we rely on a simulation exercise in which we counterfactually manipulate single aspects of countries’ age distribution and network structures. We disentangle the contributions of the kind and of the number of contacts while holding constant the age structure. More precisely, we isolate the respective effects of inter-age contact patterns, degree distribution and clustering on the virus propagation across age groups. We use survey data on face-to-face contacts for Great Britain, Italy, and Germany, to reconstruct networks that mirror empirical contact patterns in these three countries. It turns out that the number of social contacts (degree distribution) largely accounts for the higher infection rates of the elderly in the Italian context, while differences in inter-age contacts patterns are only responsible for minor differences. This suggests that policies specifically targeting inter-age contacts would be little effective.
- Subjects :
- European People
Epidemiology
Social Sciences
Geographical locations
Social Networking
Medical Conditions
Elderly
Sociology
Germany
Surveys and Questionnaires
Medicine and Health Sciences
Surveys and Questionnaire
Cluster Analysis
Ethnicities
Multidisciplinary
simulation
Italian People
Europe
Infectious Diseases
Geography
Italy
Social Networks
Medicine
Age distribution
Covid-19
inter-age contact
Network Analysis
Human
Research Article
Computer and Information Sciences
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Covid-19, inter-age contact, simulation
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Science
Context (language use)
Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Age Distribution
Population Metrics
Age groups
Humans
Adults
European Union
Cluster Analysi
Population Biology
SARS-CoV-2
COVID-19
Biology and Life Sciences
Degree distribution
United Kingdom
Age Groups
People and Places
Survey data collection
Population Groupings
Demographic economics
Contact Tracing
Contact tracing
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 16
- Issue :
- 8
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3bfe1afd273e0f08dfb7c31135202b69