Infectious disease control using contact tracing in random and scale-free networks

Contact tracing aims to identify and isolate individuals that have been in contact with infectious individuals. The efficacy of contact tracing and the hierarchy of traced nodes—nodes with higher degree traced first—is investigated and compared on random and scale-free (SF) networks with the same number of nodes N and average connection K. For values of the transmission rate larger than a threshold, the final epidemic size on SF networks is smaller than that on corresponding random networks. While in random networks new infectious and traced nodes from all classes have similar average degrees, in SF networks the average degree of nodes that are in more advanced stages of the disease is higher at any given time. On SF networks tracing removes possible sources of infection with high average degree. However a higher tracing effort is required to control the epidemic than on corresponding random networks due to the high initial velocity of spread towards the highly connected nodes. An increased latency period fails to significantly improve contact tracing efficacy. Contact tracing has a limited effect if the removal rate of susceptible nodes is relatively high, due to the fast local depletion of susceptible nodes.

[1]  P. Kaye.  Infectious diseases of humans: Dynamics and control , 1993 .

[2]  C. Bedford,et al.  The outcome of contact tracing for gonorrhoea in the United Kingdom , 1998, International journal of STD & AIDS.

[3]  J Clarke,et al.  Contact tracing for chlamydia: data on effectiveness , 1998, International journal of STD & AIDS.

[4]  M. Keeling,et al.  The effects of local spatial structure on epidemiological invasions , 1999, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[5]  B. A. Macke,et al.  Partner notification in the United States: an evidence-based review. , 1999, American journal of preventive medicine.

[6]  Albert-László Barabási,et al.  Error and attack tolerance of complex networks , 2000, Nature.

[7]  K Dietz,et al.  Contact tracing in stochastic and deterministic epidemic models. , 2000, Mathematical biosciences.

[8]  L. Amaral,et al.  The web of human sexual contacts , 2001, Nature.

[9]  M. Newman,et al.  Random graphs with arbitrary degree distributions and their applications. , 2000, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[10]  Christl A. Donnelly,et al.  Transmission intensity and impact of control policies on the foot and mouth epidemic in Great Britain , 2001, Nature.

[11]  R. May,et al.  Infection dynamics on scale-free networks. , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[12]  Alessandro Vespignani,et al.  Epidemic spreading in scale-free networks. , 2000, Physical review letters.

[13]  S. Cornell,et al.  Dynamics of the 2001 UK Foot and Mouth Epidemic: Stochastic Dispersal in a Heterogeneous Landscape , 2001, Science.

[14]  Christl A. Donnelly,et al.  The Foot-and-Mouth Epidemic in Great Britain: Pattern of Spread and Impact of Interventions , 2001, Science.

[15]  Albert-László Barabási,et al.  Statistical mechanics of complex networks , 2001, ArXiv.

[16]  Ramon Huerta,et al.  Contact tracing and epidemics control in social networks. , 2002, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[17]  C. Fraser,et al.  Transmission Dynamics of the Etiological Agent of SARS in Hong Kong: Impact of Public Health Interventions , 2003, Science.

[18]  Rowland R Kao,et al.  The impact of local heterogeneity on alternative control strategies for foot-and-mouth disease , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[19]  M. Handcock,et al.  An assessment of preferential attachment as a mechanism for human sexual network formation , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[20]  J. Robins,et al.  Transmission Dynamics and Control of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome , 2003, Science.

[21]  Matt J Keeling,et al.  Contact tracing and disease control , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[22]  T. Geisel,et al.  Forecast and control of epidemics in a globalized world. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[23]  N. Madar,et al.  Immunization and epidemic dynamics in complex networks , 2004 .

[24]  C. Fraser,et al.  Factors that make an infectious disease outbreak controllable. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[25]  Rowland R. Kao,et al.  The UK foot-and-mouth disease outbreak — the aftermath , 2004, Nature Reviews Microbiology.

[26]  Alessandro Vespignani,et al.  Velocity and hierarchical spread of epidemic outbreaks in scale-free networks. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[27]  Carsten Wiuf,et al.  Subnets of scale-free networks are not scale-free: sampling properties of networks. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[28]  I. Kiss,et al.  Disease contact tracing in random and clustered networks , 2005, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[29]  R. Christley,et al.  Network analysis of cattle movement in Great Britain. , 2005 .

[30]  Alan M. Frieze,et al.  Random graphs , 2006, SODA '06.