Institute of Health and Environment, Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
Department of Public Health Science, Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
J Korean Med Sci. 2020 Sep 7;35(35):e321. doi: 10.3346/jkms.2020.35.e321.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has posed significant global public health challenges and created a substantial economic burden. Korea has experienced an extensive outbreak, which was linked to a religion-related super-spreading event. However, the implementation of various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including social distancing, spring semester postponing, and extensive testing and contact tracing controlled the epidemic. Herein, we estimated the effectiveness of each NPI using a simulation model.
A compartment model with a susceptible-exposed-infectious-quarantined-hospitalized structure was employed. Using the Monte-Carlo-Markov-Chain algorithm with Gibbs' sampling method, we estimated the time-varying effective contact rate to calibrate the model with the reported daily new confirmed cases from February 12th to March 31st (7 weeks). Moreover, we conducted scenario analyses by adjusting the parameters to estimate the effectiveness of NPI.
Relaxed social distancing among adults would have increased the number of cases 27.4-fold until the end of March. Spring semester non-postponement would have increased the number of cases 1.7-fold among individuals aged 0-19, while lower quarantine and detection rates would have increased the number of cases 1.4-fold.
Among the three NPI measures, social distancing in adults showed the highest effectiveness. The substantial effect of social distancing should be considered when preparing for the 2nd wave of COVID-19.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行对全球公共卫生构成了重大挑战，并造成了巨大的经济负担。韩国经历了一次广泛的疫情爆发，这与一次与宗教有关的超级传播事件有关。然而，实施各种非药物干预措施（NPIs），包括社交距离、春季学期推迟、广泛的检测和接触者追踪，控制了疫情。在此，我们使用模拟模型估计了每种 NPI 的效果。
采用易感-暴露-感染-隔离-住院的 compartment 模型。使用带有 Gibbs 抽样法的蒙特卡罗马尔可夫链算法，我们估计了时变有效接触率，以校准模型与 2 月 12 日至 3 月 31 日（7 周）报告的每日新确诊病例。此外，我们通过调整参数进行了情景分析，以估计 NPI 的效果。
放松成年人的社交距离将使 3 月底的病例数增加 27.4 倍。春季学期不推迟将使 0-19 岁人群的病例数增加 1.7 倍，而较低的隔离和检测率将使病例数增加 1.4 倍。
在这三种 NPI 措施中，成年人的社交距离措施效果最高。在为第二波 COVID-19 做准备时，应考虑社交距离的巨大影响。
