Hâncean Marian-Gabriel, Lerner Jürgen, Perc Matjaž, Ghiţă Maria Cristina, Bunaciu David-Andrei, Stoica Adelina Alexandra, Mihăilă Bianca-Elena
Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Panduri 90-92, 050663, Romania.
Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz, 78457, Konstanz, Germany.
J Complex Netw. 2021 Sep 7;9(4):cnab026. doi: 10.1093/comnet/cnab026. eCollection 2021 Aug.
We analyse officially procured data detailing the COVID-19 transmission in Romania's capital Bucharest between 1st August and 31st October 2020. We apply relational hyperevent models on 19,713 individuals with 13,377 infection ties to determine to what degree the disease spread is affected by age whilst controlling for other covariate and human-to-human transmission network effects. We find that positive cases are more likely to nominate alters of similar age as their sources of infection, thus providing evidence for age homophily. We also show that the relative infection risk is negatively associated with the age of peers, such that the risk of infection increases as the average age of contacts decreases. Additionally, we find that adults between the ages 35 and 44 are pivotal in the transmission of the disease to other age groups. Our results may contribute to better controlling future COVID-19 waves, and they also point to the key age groups which may be essential for vaccination given their prominent role in the transmission of the virus.
我们分析了官方获取的数据,这些数据详细记录了2020年8月1日至10月31日期间罗马尼亚首都布加勒斯特的新冠病毒传播情况。我们对19713名个体以及13377条感染关联应用关系超事件模型,以确定在控制其他协变量和人际传播网络效应的同时,疾病传播受年龄影响的程度。我们发现,阳性病例更有可能将年龄相仿的人列为感染源,从而为年龄同质性提供了证据。我们还表明,相对感染风险与同龄人年龄呈负相关,即随着接触者平均年龄的降低,感染风险增加。此外,我们发现35至44岁的成年人在疾病传播给其他年龄组的过程中起关键作用。我们的研究结果可能有助于更好地控制未来的新冠疫情浪潮,同时也指出了鉴于其在病毒传播中的突出作用,哪些关键年龄组可能对疫苗接种至关重要。