Farthing Trevor S, Lanzas Cristina
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Epidemics. 2021 Dec;37:100524. doi: 10.1016/j.epidem.2021.100524. Epub 2021 Nov 12.
Nonpharmaceutical interventions for minimizing indoor SARS-CoV-2 transmission continue to be critical tools for protecting susceptible individuals from infection, even as effective vaccines are produced and distributed globally. We developed a spatially-explicit agent-based model for simulating indoor respiratory pathogen transmission during discrete events taking place in a single room within a sub-day time frame, and used it to compare effects of four interventions on reducing secondary SARS-CoV-2 attack rates during a superspreading event by simulating a well-known case study. We found that preventing people from moving within the simulated room and efficacious mask usage appear to have the greatest effects on reducing infection risk, but multiple concurrent interventions are required to minimize the proportion of susceptible individuals infected. Social distancing had little effect on reducing transmission if individuals were randomly relocated within the room to simulate activity-related movements during the gathering. Furthermore, our results suggest that there is potential for ventilation airflow to expose susceptible people to aerosolized pathogens even if they are relatively far from infectious individuals. Maximizing the vertical aerosol removal rate is paramount to successful transmission-risk reduction when using ventilation systems as intervention tools.
即使全球范围内已生产并分发了有效的疫苗，用于最大限度减少室内严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）传播的非药物干预措施仍是保护易感人群免受感染的关键手段。我们开发了一种基于空间显式智能体的模型，用于模拟在一天内的某个时间段于单个房间内发生的离散事件期间室内呼吸道病原体的传播，并通过模拟一个著名的案例研究，使用该模型比较了四种干预措施对在超级传播事件期间降低SARS-CoV-2二次感染率的效果。我们发现，阻止人们在模拟房间内移动以及有效使用口罩似乎对降低感染风险具有最大效果，但需要同时采取多种干预措施，以尽量减少易感个体被感染的比例。如果在房间内随机重新安置个体以模拟聚会期间与活动相关的移动，社交距离对减少传播几乎没有效果。此外，我们的结果表明，即使易感人群相对远离感染个体，通风气流仍有可能使他们暴露于雾化病原体中。当使用通风系统作为干预工具时，最大化垂直气溶胶去除率对于成功降低传播风险至关重要。
