Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1942/35843
Title: A data-driven metapopulation model for the Belgian COVID-19 epidemic: assessing the impact of lockdown and exit strategies
Authors: COLETTI, Pietro 
LIBIN, Pieter 
PETROF, Oana 
WILLEM, Lander 
ABRAMS, Steven 
FAES, Christel 
FAES, Christel 
KUYLEN, Elise 
WAMBUA, James 
Beutels, P
HENS, Niel 
Issue Date: 2021
Publisher: BMC
Source: BMC infectious diseases (Online), 21 (1)
Abstract: Background In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, several countries adopted measures of social distancing to a different degree. For many countries, after successfully curbing the initial wave, lockdown measures were gradually lifted. In Belgium, such relief started on May 4th with phase 1, followed by several subsequent phases over the next few weeks. Methods We analysed the expected impact of relaxing stringent lockdown measures taken according to the phased Belgian exit strategy. We developed a stochastic, data-informed, meta-population model that accounts for mixing and mobility of the age-structured population of Belgium. The model is calibrated to daily hospitalization data and is able to reproduce the outbreak at the national level. We consider different scenarios for relieving the lockdown, quantified in terms of relative reductions in pre-pandemic social mixing and mobility. We validate our assumptions by making comparisons with social contact data collected during and after the lockdown. Results Our model is able to successfully describe the initial wave of COVID-19 in Belgium and identifies interactions during leisure/other activities as pivotal in the exit strategy. Indeed, we find a smaller impact of school re-openings as compared to restarting leisure activities and re-openings of work places. We also assess the impact of case isolation of new (suspected) infections, and find that it allows re-establishing relatively more social interactions while still ensuring epidemic control. Scenarios predicting a second wave of hospitalizations were not observed, suggesting that the per-contact probability of infection has changed with respect to the pre-lockdown period. Conclusions Contacts during leisure activities are found to be most influential, followed by professional contacts and school contacts, respectively, for an impending second wave of COVID-19. Regular re-assessment of social contacts in the population is therefore crucial to adjust to evolving behavioral changes that can affect epidemic diffusion.
Keywords: COVID-19;Behavioral changes;Metapopulation;Epidemic modeling;Spatial transmission;Mixing patterns
Document URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1942/35843
e-ISSN: 1471-2334
DOI: 10.1186/s12879-021-06092-w
ISI #: 000656075700001
Rights: The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and yourintended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Category: A1
Type: Journal Contribution
Validations: ecoom 2022
Appears in Collections:Research publications

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