Inferring age-specific differences in susceptibility to and infectiousness upon SARS-CoV-2 infection based on Belgian social contact data

Several important aspects related to SARS-CoV-2 transmission are not well known due to a lack of appropriate data. However, mathematical and computational tools can be used to extract part of this information from the available data, like some hidden age-related characteristics. In this paper, we present a method to investigate age-specific differences in transmission parameters related to susceptibility to and infectiousness upon contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection. More specifically, we use panel-based social contact data from diary-based surveys conducted in Belgium combined with the next gene... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Franco, Nicolas
Coletti, Pietro
Willem, Lander
Angeli, Leonardo
Lajot, Adrien
Abrams, Steven
Beutels, Philippe
Faes, Christel
Hens, Niel
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Reihe/Periodikum: PLOS Computational Biology ; volume 18, issue 3, page e1009965 ; ISSN 1553-7358
Verlag/Hrsg.: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Schlagwörter: Computational Theory and Mathematics / Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience / Genetics / Molecular Biology / Ecology / Modeling and Simulation / Evolution / Behavior and Systematics
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26507541
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009965

Several important aspects related to SARS-CoV-2 transmission are not well known due to a lack of appropriate data. However, mathematical and computational tools can be used to extract part of this information from the available data, like some hidden age-related characteristics. In this paper, we present a method to investigate age-specific differences in transmission parameters related to susceptibility to and infectiousness upon contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection. More specifically, we use panel-based social contact data from diary-based surveys conducted in Belgium combined with the next generation principle to infer the relative incidence and we compare this to real-life incidence data. Comparing these two allows for the estimation of age-specific transmission parameters. Our analysis implies the susceptibility in children to be around half of the susceptibility in adults, and even lower for very young children (preschooler). However, the probability of adults and the elderly to contract the infection is decreasing throughout the vaccination campaign, thereby modifying the picture over time.