Epidemic threshold influenced by non-pharmaceutical interventions in residential university environments

• Published in: Chinese physics B Vol. 33; no. 2; pp. 28707 - 632
• Main Authors: Lu, Zechao, Zhao, Shengmei, Shu, Huazhong, Gong, Long-Yan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd 01.01.2024
• Subjects: epidemic threshold; non-pharmaceutical interventions; susceptible-infected-recovered model; time-varying heterogeneous contact networks; epidemic threshold; susceptible-infected-recovered model; non-pharmaceutical interventions; time-varying heterogeneous contact networks
• ISSN: 1674-1056; 2058-3834
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/ace2b0

The control of highly contagious disease spreading in campuses is a critical challenge. In residential universities, students attend classes according to a curriculum schedule, and mainly pack into classrooms, dining halls and dorms. They move from one place to another. To simulate such environments, we propose an agent-based susceptible–infected–recovered model with time-varying heterogeneous contact networks. In close environments, maintaining physical distancing is the most widely recommended and encouraged non-pharmaceutical intervention. It can be easily realized by using larger classrooms, adopting staggered dining hours, decreasing the number of students per dorm and so on. Their real-world influence remains uncertain. With numerical simulations, we obtain epidemic thresholds. The effect of such countermeasures on reducing the number of disease cases is also quantitatively evaluated.