Related papers: Estimating within-household contact networks from …
Acute infectious diseases are transmitted over networks of social contacts. Epidemic models are used to predict the spread of emergent pathogens and compare intervention strategies. Many of these models assume equal probability of contact…
Many epidemic models approximate social contact behavior by assuming random mixing within mixing groups (e.g., homes, schools and workplaces). The effect of more realistic social network structure on estimates of epidemic parameters is an…
Face-to-face social contacts are potentially important transmission routes for acute respiratory infections, and understanding the contact network can improve our ability to predict, contain, and control epidemics. Although workplaces are…
Contact matrices are a commonly adopted data representation, used to develop compartmental models for epidemic spreading, accounting for the contact heterogeneities across age groups. Their estimation, however, is generally time and effort…
Capturing the structure of a population and characterising contacts within the population are key to reliable projections of infectious disease. Two main elements of population structure -- contact heterogeneity and age -- have been…
The last two decades have seen considerable progress in foundational aspects of statistical network analysis, but the path from theory to application is not straightforward. Two large, heterogeneous samples of small networks of…
Background: Human-to-human transmission of pathogens fundamentally depends on interactions among infectious and susceptible individuals, yet traditional population-scale models often overlook the stochastic, behaviour-driven, and highly…
In dynamic models of infectious disease transmission, typically various mixing patterns are imposed on the so-called Who-Acquires-Infection-From-Whom matrix (WAIFW). These imposed mixing patterns are based on prior knowledge of age-related…
Capturing the structured mixing within a population is key to the reliable projection of infectious disease dynamics and hence informed control. Both heterogeneity in the number of contacts and age-structured mixing have been repeatedly…
The contact structure between hosts has a critical influence on disease spread. However, most networkbased models used in epidemiology tend to ignore heterogeneity in the weighting of contacts. This assumption is known to be at odds with…
Social interactions shape the patterns of spreading processes in a population. Techniques such as diaries or proximity sensors allow to collect data about encounters and to build networks of contacts between individuals. The contact…
Households play a crucial role in the propagation of infectious diseases due to the frequent and prolonged interactions that typically occur between their members. Recent studies have emphasized the need to include socioeconomic variables…
Social contact patterns are a key input to many infectious disease models. Contact surveys, where participants are asked to provide information on their recent close and casual contacts with others, are one of the standard methods to…
The dynamics of contact networks and epidemics of infectious diseases often occur on comparable time scales. Ignoring one of these time scales may provide an incomplete understanding of the population dynamics of the infection process. We…
Mathematical and computational modeling approaches are increasingly used as quantitative tools in the analysis and forecasting of infectious disease epidemics. The growing need for realism in addressing complex public health questions is…
Little quantitative information is available on the mixing patterns of children in school environments. Describing and understanding contacts between children at school would help quantify the transmission opportunities of respiratory…
In this article, we investigate the importance of demographic and contact patterns in determining the spread of COVID-19 and to the effectiveness of social distancing policies. We investigate these questions proposing an augmented…
Social contact studies, investigating social contact patterns in a population sample, have been an important contribution for epidemic models to better fit real life epidemics. A contact matrix $M$, having the \emph{mean} number of contacts…
The importance of modeling the spread of epidemics through a population has led to the development of mathematical models for infectious disease propagation. A number of empirical studies have collected and analyzed data on contacts between…
Network--based epidemic models that account for heterogeneous contact patterns are extensively used to predict and control the diffusion of infectious diseases. We use census and survey data to reconstruct a geo--referenced and…