College of General Education, Kookmin University, Seoul 01160, Korea.
Department of Mathematics, Graduate School, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 02447, Korea.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Mar 29;18(7):3530. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18073530.
The MERS-CoV spread in South Korea in 2015 was not only the largest outbreak of MERS-CoV in the region other than the Middle East but also a historic epidemic in South Korea. Thus, investigation of the MERS-CoV transmission dynamics, especially by agent-based modeling, would be meaningful for devising intervention strategies for novel infectious diseases. In this study, an agent-based model on MERS-CoV transmission in South Korea in 2015 was built and analyzed. The prominent characteristic of this model was that it built the simulation environment based on the real-world contact tracing network, which can be characterized as being scale-free. In the simulations, we explored the effectiveness of three possible intervention scenarios; mass quarantine, isolation, and isolation combined with acquaintance quarantine. The differences in MERS-CoV transmission dynamics by the number of links of the index case agent were examined. The simulation results indicate that isolation combined with acquaintance quarantine is more effective than others, and they also suggest the key role of super-spreaders in MERS-CoV transmission.
2015 年韩国中东呼吸综合征冠状病毒（MERS-CoV）的传播不仅是中东以外地区最大的 MERS-CoV 爆发，也是韩国历史上的一次重大疫情。因此，对 MERS-CoV 传播动力学的研究，特别是基于主体的建模，对于制定新传染病的干预策略具有重要意义。在这项研究中，建立并分析了 2015 年韩国中东呼吸综合征冠状病毒传播的基于主体模型。该模型的突出特点是，它基于现实世界的接触追踪网络构建模拟环境，其具有无标度特征。在模拟中，我们探讨了三种可能的干预方案的效果：大规模检疫、隔离和隔离加熟人检疫。还研究了索引病例数目的链接数对 MERS-CoV 传播动力学的影响。模拟结果表明，隔离加熟人检疫比其他方案更有效，同时也表明超级传播者在 MERS-CoV 传播中起着关键作用。
