Peer Review #3 of "Using a real-world network to model the trade-off between stay-at-home restriction, vaccination, social distancing and working hours on COVID-19 dynamics (v0.2)"

Ramin Nashebi YTU , Murat Sarı YTU , Seyfullah Kotil YTU , J Liu , W Xie , Y Wang , J Dotis , E Roilides , Goeyvaerts Nele , Santermans Eva , Potter Gail , Torneri Andrea , Willem Van Kerckhove Kim , Aerts Lander , Beutels Marc , Hens Philippe , Niel , Jean Van Seventer , S Natasha , Hochberg , A Nande , B Adlam , J Sheen , M Levy , A Hill , N Erguson , D Cummings , C Fraser , J Guest , C Del Rio , T Sanchez , E Tognotti , H Markel , H Lipman , J Navarro , A Sloan , J Michalsen , A Stern , R Savaris , G Pumi , J Dalzochio , Manmath Nayak , Salath Funk Sebastian , Jansen Marcel , A Vincent , M Shen , Z Peng , Y Guo , C Grijalva , M Rolfes , Y Zhu , T Bulfone , M Malekinejad , G Rutherford , N Razani , Te Hua Qian , Li Miao , Xiaohong Liu , Danting Zheng , Yuguo Luo , Li , M Billah , M Miah , M Khan , R Breban , J Riou , A , D Fisman , G Leung , M , S Cauchemez , M Van Kerkhove , C Donnelly , S Riley , A Rambaut , N Goeyvaerts , E Santermans , G Potter , A Torneri , K Van Kerckhove , L Willem , M Aerts , P Beutels , N Hens , Long Jing , Ming-Jin Liu , Zhou-Bin Zhang , Li-Qun Fang , Jun Yuan , Kanika Kuwelker , Fan Zhou , Bjrn Blomberg , Sarah Lartey , Karl Brokstad , Mai , Chi Trieu , S Iavicoli , F Boccuni , G Buresti

Abstract

Background.Human behaviour, economic activity, vaccination, and social distancing are inseparably entangled in epidemic management.This study aims to investigate the effects of various parameters such as stay-at-home restrictions, work hours, vaccination, and social distance on the containment of pandemics such as COVID-19. Methods.To achieve this, we have developed an agent based model based on a time-dynamic graph with stochastic transmission events.The graph is constructed from a real-world social network.The edges of graph have been categorized into three categories: home, workplaces, and social environment.The conditions needed to mitigate the spread of wild-type COVID-19 and the delta variant have been analyzed.Our purposeful agent based model has carefully executed tens of thousands of individualbased simulations.We propose simple relationships for the trade-offs between effective reproduction number (R e ), transmission rate, working hours, vaccination, and stay-at-home restrictions.Results.We have found that the effect of a 13.6% increase in vaccination for wild-type (WT) COVID-19 is equivalent to reducing four hours of work or a one-day stay-at-home restriction.For the delta, 20.2% vaccination has the same effect.Also, since we can keep track of household and non-household infections, we observed that the change in household transmission rate does not significantly alter the R e .Household infections are not limited by transmission rate due to the high frequency of connections.For the specifications of COVID-19, the R e depends on the non-household transmissions rate.Conclusions.Our findings highlight that decreasing working hours is the least effective among the nonpharmaceutical interventions.Our results suggest that policymakers decrease work-related activities as a last resort and should probably not do so when the effects are minimal, as shown.Furthermore, the enforcement of stay-at-home restrictions is moderately effective and can be used in conjunction with other measures if absolutely necessary.