Joint Research Laboratory for Intelligent Disease Surveillance & Control (IDSC) Unveils COVID-19 Transmission Patterns to Answer When It Will Be Safe to Reopen

HONG KONG, April 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine journal has recently reported an original research by a team of scientists from the Joint Research Laboratory for Intelligent Disease Surveillance and Control (IDSC Lab) in Hong Kong (What are the Underlying Transmission Patterns of COVID-19 Outbreak? info.thelancet.com/eclinm-covid-19). This research uncovers the underlying patterns of COVID-19 transmission by investigating social contacts among different age-groups and their associated disease transmission risks. It enables governments or policy makers to have a grip on the development of COVID-19, proactively, throughout its different phases. Policy makers will be able to answer questions like, when will it be safe to bring work and life back to normal?

Professor Jiming Liu, a computer scientist who led this study explained, "Significantly, our work has touched upon an important problem at a critical moment in time, and a deeper understanding of what may have happened in the outbreak is now overdue. Addressing this key question enables us to gain insights into not only retrospective, but more importantly prospective, situations of the outbreak and hence plan a series of measures accordingly for precision intervention."

Professor Xiao-Nong Zhou, an epidemiologist involved in this study commented, "Adopting the data-driven, computational methodology to understand the transmission patterns of COVID-19 provides an objective and scientifically sound way to assess the transmission risks and the effectiveness of intervention strategies. This work has offered important and timely tools to other countries/regions for their intervention planning and operational responses.

Professor Yong Shi, a management scientist who also engaged in this study said, "The COVID-19 pandemic like a storm has hit the global economy. When the COVID-19 outbreak is contained, policy makers will need to think about when to safely bring work and life back to normal. This work responds to this pressing need by establishing a scientific ground for systematically planning the resumption of social/business activities near the end of the outbreak."

To determine the right timing for resuming work and life, the method developed by this team consists of a retrospective analysis of COVID-19 to gain an in-depth understanding of age-specific contact-based disease transmission. This is followed by a prospective analysis of different work resumption plans to assess not only the respective economic implications of the plans, but most importantly, the associated disease transmission risks.

The key to their method of COVID-19 transmission pattern characterization lies in modeling the interactions among people. Specifically, the team considered four representative settings of social contacts that may cause the disease spread: (1) households; (2) schools; (3) workplaces; and (4) public places. They developed a computational method to measure the contact intensity between different age-groups in those social settings. With such an in-depth characterization of social contact-based transmission, it is possible to analyze and explain the ins and outs of the COVID-19 outbreak, including the past and future risks, intervention effectiveness, and corresponding risks of restoring social activities.

CONTACT:
Prof. Jiming Liu
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: +852-3411-7088
Institution: Computer Science Department, Hong Kong Baptist University

SOURCE Joint Research Laboratory for Intelligent Disease Surveillance and Control