Members of the SIMID team are excited to announce their participation in the upcoming Epidemics9 conference, to be held in Bologna from November 29th to December 1st. We are looking forward to engaging with experts from around the globe and sharing insights on the latest developments in the field. You can find our contributions here…
Tuesday:
- Studying time-evolution of age-specific differences in susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection based on social contact data. (Nicolas Franco et al.)
Summary: Age-specific susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 recovered by a computational method based on the next generation matrix, with decreasing susceptibility periods corresponding to vaccination campaigns and increasing susceptibility periods corresponding to waning and Omicron’s immune evasion. - The impact of household physical distancing and its timing on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2: Insights from a household transmission evaluation study. (Pietro Coletti et al)
Summary: Detailed data on contacts among household members could inform the estimation of secondary attack rates and other transmission parameters. We characterize contact patterns of relevance for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infections in households and we combine it with testing data to estimate the impact of physical distancing and its timing on secondary transmissions.
Wednesday:
- Evaluating the impact of vaccination strategies on age-specific QALY gains in reducing the burden of SARS-CoV-2 (Lander Willem et al)
Summary: Our research focused on assessing the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination in Belgium during 2021–2022, examining the gains in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) from administering a two-dose regimen to children aged 5-11 and additional first booster doses to adults. While increasing vaccination among 5-11-year-olds led to reduced mortality, the greatest average increase in QALYs was observed with additional booster doses in adults, highlighting the need to consider how health benefits are distributed across different age groups.
Thursday
- Multi-pathogens spreading dynamics in an individual-based model accounting for home isolation and heterologous effects (Andrea Torneri et al)
Summary: The spread of an infectious disease is a complex biological process influenced by a variety of factors, including the co-circulation of other infectious agents. Based on hypotheses reported in the literature, we show through a simulation study how heterologous effects in combination with home isolation can affect the spread of COVID-19 and influenza, and of two COVID-19 strains. - The influence of COVID-19 risk perceptions and vaccination status on the number of social contacts across Europe: insights from the CoMix study (James Wambua et al) Summary: Human behaviour is crucial for the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. Following the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic, global efforts to curb the spread of the disease focused on implementing both Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs, e.g. lockdowns) and Pharmaceutical Interventions ( e.g. vaccination). Since NPIs mainly encompass social distancing measures, adherence to these measures could be modulated by attitudinal determinants. We explore the relation between risk perception, vaccination status and social contact behaviour.
- Insights on the role of children in COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium: a longitudinal sensitivity analysis (Leonardo Angeli et al)
Summary: The age-specific heterogeneity within a population notably influences the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. Based on the next-generation approach, our study conducts a perturbation analysis using data from Belgium to delineate the role of different age groups in disease propagation. We consider the diverse pandemic stages and fluctuating government measures from January 2021 to March 2022.