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Modelling the epidemiological implications for SARS-CoV-2 of Christmas household bubbles in England
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Hill, Edward M. (2023) Modelling the epidemiological implications for SARS-CoV-2 of Christmas household bubbles in England. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 557 . 111331. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111331 ISSN 0022-5193.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111331
Abstract
The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 saw severe detriments to public health being inflicted by COVID-19 disease throughout 2020. In the lead up to Christmas 2020, the UK Government sought an easement of social restrictions that would permit spending time with others over the Christmas period, whilst limiting the risk of spreading SARS-CoV-2. In November 2020, plans were published to allow individuals to socialise within ‘Christmas bubbles’ with friends and family. This policy involved a planned easing of restrictions in England between 23-27 December 2020, with Christmas bubbles allowing people from up to three households to meet throughout the holiday period. We estimated the epidemiological impact of both this and alternative bubble strategies that allowed extending contacts beyond the immediate household. We used a stochastic individual-based model for a synthetic population of 100,000 households, with demographic and SARS-CoV-2 epidemiological characteristics comparable to England as of November 2020. We evaluated five Christmas bubble scenarios for the period 23-27 December 2020, assuming our populations of households did not have symptomatic infection present and were not in isolation as the eased social restrictions began. Assessment comprised incidence and cumulative infection metrics. We tested the sensitivity of the results to a situation where it was possible for households to be in isolation at the beginning of the Christmas bubble period and also when there was lower adherence to testing, contact tracing and isolation interventions. We found that visiting family and friends over the holiday period for a shorter duration and in smaller groups was less risky than spending the entire five days together. The increases in infection from greater amounts of social mixing disproportionately impacted the eldest. We provide this account as an illustration of a real-time contribution of modelling insights to a scientific advisory group, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O) for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in the UK, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This manuscript was submitted as part of a theme issue on “Modelling COVID-19 and Preparedness for Future Pandemics”.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Mathematics |
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| SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | COVID-19 (Disease), COVID-19 (Disease) -- Epidemiology -- Mathematical models , Communicable diseases -- Mathematical models, Social distancing (Public health) -- Mathematical models | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Theoretical Biology | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Elsevier | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0022-5193 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 21 January 2023 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 557 | ||||||||
| Article Number: | 111331 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111331 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 3 November 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 4 November 2022 | ||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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