Superspreading k-cores at the center of COVID-19 pandemic persistence

The spread of COVID-19 caused by the recently discovered SARS-CoV-2 virus has become a worldwide problem with devastating consequences. To slow down the spread of the pandemic, mass quarantines have been implemented globally, provoking further social and economic disruptions. Here, we implement a co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2021-03
Main Authors: Serafino, Matteo, Monteiro, Higor S, Luo, Shaojun, Reis, Saulo D S, Igual, Carles, Lima Neto, Antonio S, Travizano, Matias, Andrade, José S, Jr, Makse, Hernán A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applications programs
Chains
Contact tracing
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Disease control
Disease transmission
Disintegration
Economic analysis
Mobile computing
Network analysis
Pandemics
Protocol (computers)
Quarantine
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Viral diseases
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Summary:The spread of COVID-19 caused by the recently discovered SARS-CoV-2 virus has become a worldwide problem with devastating consequences. To slow down the spread of the pandemic, mass quarantines have been implemented globally, provoking further social and economic disruptions. Here, we implement a comprehensive contact tracing network analysis to find an optimized quarantine protocol to dismantle the chain of transmission of coronavirus with minimal disruptions to society. We track billions of anonymized GPS human mobility datapoints from a compilation of hundreds of mobile apps deployed in Latin America to monitor the evolution of the contact network of disease transmission before and after the confinements. As a consequence of the lockdowns, people's mobility across the region decreases by \(\sim\)53\%, which results in a drastic disintegration of the transmission network by \(\sim\)90\%. However, this disintegration did not halt the spreading of the disease. Our analysis indicates that superspreading k-core structures persist in the transmission network to prolong the pandemic. Once the k-cores are identified, an optimized strategy to break the chain of transmission is to quarantine a minimal number of 'weak links' with high betweenness centrality connecting the large k-cores. As countries built contact tracing apps to fight the pandemic, our results could turn into a valuable resource to help deploy quarantine protocols with minimized disruptions.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2103.08685