Biglarbeigi Pardis, Ng Kok Yew, Finlay Dewar, Bond Raymond, Jing Min, McLaughlin James
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Built-Environment, University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, UK.
PeerJ. 2021 Feb 25;9:e10992. doi: 10.7717/peerj.10992. eCollection 2021.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak started in December 2019 and rapidly spread around the world affecting millions of people. With the growth of infection rate, many countries adopted different policies to control the spread of the disease. The UK implemented strict rules instructing individuals to stay at home except in some special circumstances starting from 23 March 2020. Accordingly, this study focuses on sensitivity analysis of transmissibility of the infection as the effects of removing restrictions, for example by returning different occupational groups to their normal working environment and its effect on the reproduction number in the UK. For this reason, available social contact matrices are adopted for the population of UK to account for the average number of contacts. Different scenarios are then considered to analyse the variability of total contacts on the reproduction number in the UK as a whole and each of its four nations. Our data-driven retrospective analysis shows that if more than 38.5% of UK working-age population return to their normal working environment, the reproduction number in the UK is expected to be higher than 1. However, analysis of each nation, separately, shows that local reproduction number in each nation may be different and requires more adequate analysis. Accordingly, we believe that using statistical methods and historical data can provide good estimation of local transmissibility and reproduction number in any region. As a consequence of this analysis, efforts to reduce the restrictions should be implemented locally via different control policies. It is important that these policies consider the social contacts, population density, and the occupational groups that are specific to each region.
冠状病毒（COVID-19）疫情于2019年12月开始，并迅速在全球蔓延，影响了数百万人。随着感染率的上升，许多国家采取了不同政策来控制疾病传播。英国从2020年3月23日起实施严格规定，指示个人除非在某些特殊情况下必须待在家中。因此，本研究聚焦于感染传播性的敏感性分析，即取消限制措施（例如让不同职业群体回到正常工作环境）的影响及其对英国再生数的影响。出于这个原因，采用了英国人口的可用社会接触矩阵来计算平均接触次数。然后考虑不同情景，以分析英国整体及其四个国家中总接触次数对再生数的变化情况。我们的数据驱动回顾性分析表明，如果超过38.5%的英国工作年龄人口回到正常工作环境，预计英国的再生数将高于1。然而，分别对每个国家进行分析表明，每个国家的本地再生数可能不同，需要更充分的分析。因此，我们认为使用统计方法和历史数据可以很好地估计任何地区的本地传播性和再生数。作为该分析的结果，应通过不同的控制政策在地方层面实施减少限制的措施。重要的是，这些政策应考虑每个地区特有的社会接触、人口密度和职业群体。
