Wu Logan, Baker Christopher M, Tierney Nicholas, Carville Kylie, McVernon Jodie, Golding Nick, McCaw James M, Shearer Freya M
Population Health and Immunity, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2025 Apr 4;21(4):e1012906. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012906. eCollection 2025 Apr.
Contact tracing is an important public health measure used to reduce transmission of infectious diseases. Contact tracers typically conduct telephone interviews with cases to identify contacts and direct them to quarantine, with the aim of preventing onward transmission. However, in situations where caseloads exceed the capacity of the public health system, timely interviews may not be feasible for all cases. Here we present a modelling framework for assessing the impact of different case interview prioritisation strategies on disease transmission. Our model is based on Australian contact tracing procedures and informed by contact tracing data on COVID-19 cases notified in Australia from 2020 to 2021. Our results demonstrate that last-in-first-out strategies (where cases with the most recent swab or notification dates are interviewed first) are more effective at reducing transmission than first-in-first-out strategies (where cases with the oldest swab or notification dates are interviewed first) or strategies with no explicit prioritisation. To maximise the public health benefit from a given case interview capacity, public health practitioners may consider our findings when designing case interview prioritisation protocols for outbreak response.
接触者追踪是一项重要的公共卫生措施，用于减少传染病传播。接触者追踪员通常会与病例进行电话访谈，以识别接触者并指导他们进行隔离，目的是防止疾病进一步传播。然而，在病例数量超过公共卫生系统处理能力的情况下，对所有病例进行及时访谈可能并不可行。在此，我们提出一个建模框架，用于评估不同病例访谈优先级策略对疾病传播的影响。我们的模型基于澳大利亚的接触者追踪程序，并参考了2020年至2021年澳大利亚通报的新冠肺炎病例的接触者追踪数据。我们的结果表明，后进先出策略（即首先访谈最近一次拭子检测或通报日期的病例）在减少传播方面比先进先出策略（即首先访谈最早一次拭子检测或通报日期的病例）或无明确优先级的策略更有效。为了从给定的病例访谈能力中最大限度地提高公共卫生效益，公共卫生从业人员在设计应对疫情的病例访谈优先级方案时，可考虑我们的研究结果。
