Submit to IJERPH Review for IJERPH Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2021) | Viewed by 24882

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Hyojung Lee

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Busan Center for Medical Mathematics (BCMM), National Institute for Mathematical Sciences (NIMS), Busan, Korea
Interests: mathematical modeling for infectious disease; transmission dynamics of epidemics; stochastic modeling and simulation

Dr. Sunmi Lee

E-Mail Website
Assistant Guest Editor

Department of Applied Mathematics, Kyung Hee University, Yongin 17104, Korea
Interests: mathematical modeling and numerical simulations of epidemiological systems with an emphasis on the use of optimal control theory, and computational stochastic modeling using agent-based models and network models in infectious diseases transmission dynamics

Dr. Jong-Hoon Kim

E-Mail Website
Assistant Guest Editor

International Vaccine Institute (IVI), Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-722, Korea
Interests: modeling infection transmission; vaccine impact evaluation; disease control policy making

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

An outbreak of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The respiratory disease has spread rapidly nationwide and became an emergency of major international concern. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic on 11 March 2020, representing a global health emergency. This Special Issue solicits papers that help us understand the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Papers that discuss the topics below are particularly welcome:

(1) Estimating key epidemiological variables of COVID-19 such as such as basic reproduction number (R₀), serial interval, incubation period, and case fatality ratio. The epidemiological characteristics need to be elucidated for better understanding of the COVID-19 outbreak.

(2) Investigating the biological and clinical characteristics of previous major outbreaks of coronavirus including the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection outbreaks compared to the COVID-19 outbreak.

(3) Quantifying the impact of interventions aimed at containing or mitigating the epidemic, such as rapid diagnosis, social distancing, and school closures.

We welcome both solicited and unsolicited submissions of high-quality research and review papers for this Special Issue. Thank you for your interest in and support of this Special Issue.

Dr. Hyojung Lee
Dr. Sunmi Lee
Dr. Jong-Hoon Kim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Coronavirus
COVID-19
Infectious disease
Transmission
Basic reproduction number
Effective reproduction number
Mathematical modeling
Interventions

Published Papers (6 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

11 pages, 991 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effectiveness of Intervention Strategies on MERS-CoV Transmission Dynamics in South Korea, 2015: Simulations on the Network Based on the Real-World Contact Data

by Yunhwan Kim, Hohyung Ryu and Sunmi Lee

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(7), 3530; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073530 - 29 Mar 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2362

Abstract

The MERS-CoV spread in South Korea in 2015 was not only the largest outbreak of MERS-CoV in the region other than the Middle East but also a historic epidemic in South Korea. Thus, investigation of the MERS-CoV transmission dynamics, especially by agent-based modeling, would be meaningful for devising intervention strategies for novel infectious diseases. In this study, an agent-based model on MERS-CoV transmission in South Korea in 2015 was built and analyzed. The prominent characteristic of this model was that it built the simulation environment based on the real-world contact tracing network, which can be characterized as being scale-free. In the simulations, we explored the effectiveness of three possible intervention scenarios; mass quarantine, isolation, and isolation combined with acquaintance quarantine. The differences in MERS-CoV transmission dynamics by the number of links of the index case agent were examined. The simulation results indicate that isolation combined with acquaintance quarantine is more effective than others, and they also suggest the key role of super-spreaders in MERS-CoV transmission. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))

► Show Figures

Figure 1

10 pages, 1356 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Subcritical Transmission in the Early Stage of COVID-19 in Korea

by Yong Sul Won, Jong-Hoon Kim, Chi Young Ahn and Hyojung Lee

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(3), 1265; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18031265 - 31 Jan 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2841

Abstract

While the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has been ongoing in Korea since January 2020, there were limited transmissions during the early stages of the outbreak. In the present study, we aimed to provide a statistical characterization of COVID-19 transmissions that led to this small outbreak. We collated the individual data of the first 28 confirmed cases reported from 20 January to 10 February 2020. We estimated key epidemiological parameters such as reporting delay (i.e., time from symptom onset to confirmation), incubation period, and serial interval by fitting probability distributions to the data based on the maximum likelihood estimation. We also estimated the basic reproduction number (

R_{0})

using the renewal equation, which allows for the transmissibility to differ between imported and locally transmitted cases. There were 16 imported and 12 locally transmitted cases, and secondary transmissions per case were higher for the imported cases than the locally transmitted cases (nine vs. three cases). The mean reporting delays were estimated to be 6.76 days (95% CI: 4.53, 9.28) and 2.57 days (95% CI: 1.57, 4.23) for imported and locally transmitted cases, respectively. The mean incubation period was estimated to be 5.53 days (95% CI: 3.98, 8.09) and was shorter than the mean serial interval of 6.45 days (95% CI: 4.32, 9.65). The

R_{0}

was estimated to be 0.40 (95% CI: 0.16, 0.99), accounting for the local and imported cases. The fewer secondary cases and shorter reporting delays for the locally transmitted cases suggest that contact tracing of imported cases was effective at reducing further transmissions, which helped to keep

R_{0}

below one and the overall transmissions small. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 1905 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Social Distancing for Controlling COVID-19 in Korea: An Age-Structured Modeling Approach

by Yongin Choi, James Slghee Kim, Heejin Choi, Hyojung Lee and Chang Hyeong Lee

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(20), 7474; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17207474 - 14 Oct 2020

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3476

Abstract

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred all over the world between 2019 and 2020. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since then, there have been more than 21 million incidences and 761 thousand casualties worldwide as of 16 August 2020. One of the epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 is that its symptoms and fatality rates vary with the ages of the infected individuals. This study aims at assessing the impact of social distancing on the reduction of COVID-19 infected cases by constructing a mathematical model and using epidemiological data of incidences in Korea. We developed an age-structured mathematical model for describing the age-dependent dynamics of the spread of COVID-19 in Korea. We estimated the model parameters and computed the reproduction number using the actual epidemiological data reported from 1 February to 15 June 2020. We then divided the data into seven distinct periods depending on the intensity of social distancing implemented by the Korean government. By using a contact matrix to describe the contact patterns between ages, we investigated the potential effect of social distancing under various scenarios. We discovered that when the intensity of social distancing is reduced, the number of COVID-19 cases increases; the number of incidences among the age groups of people 60 and above increases significantly more than that of the age groups below the age of 60. This significant increase among the elderly groups poses a severe threat to public health because the incidence of severe cases and fatality rates of the elderly group are much higher than those of the younger groups. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain strict social distancing rules to reduce infected cases. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 753 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploration of Superspreading Events in 2015 MERS-CoV Outbreak in Korea by Branching Process Models

by Seoyun Choe, Hee-Sung Kim and Sunmi Lee

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(17), 6137; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17176137 - 24 Aug 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2904

Abstract

South Korea has learned a valuable lesson from the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus outbreak in 2015. The 2015 MERS-CoV outbreak in Korea was the largest outbreak outside the Middle Eastern countries and was characterized as a nosocomial infection and a superspreading event. To assess the characteristics of a super spreading event, we specifically analyze the behaviors and epidemiological features of superspreaders. Furthermore, we employ a branching process model to understand a significantly high level of heterogeneity in generating secondary cases. The existing model of the branching process (Lloyd-Smith model) is used to incorporate individual heterogeneity into the model, and the key epidemiological components (the reproduction number and the dispersive parameter) are estimated through the empirical transmission tree of the MERS-CoV data. We also investigate the impact of control intervention strategies on the MERS-CoV dynamics of the Lloyd-Smith model. Our results highlight the roles of superspreaders in a high level of heterogeneity. This indicates that the conditions within hospitals as well as multiple hospital visits were the crucial factors for superspreading events of the 2015 MERS-CoV outbreak. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))

► Show Figures

Figure 1

9 pages, 1279 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Measurement Method for Evaluating the Lockdown Policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Mohammed Al Zobbi, Belal Alsinglawi, Omar Mubin and Fady Alnajjar

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(15), 5574; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17155574 - 2 Aug 2020

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 5221

Abstract

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected day to day life and slowed down the global economy. Most countries are enforcing strict quarantine to control the havoc of this highly contagious disease. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many data analyses have been done to provide close support to decision-makers. We propose a method comprising data analytics and machine learning classification for evaluating the effectiveness of lockdown regulations. Lockdown regulations should be reviewed on a regular basis by governments, to enable reasonable control over the outbreak. The model aims to measure the efficiency of lockdown procedures for various countries. The model shows a direct correlation between lockdown procedures and the infection rate. Lockdown efficiency is measured by finding a correlation coefficient between lockdown attributes and the infection rate. The lockdown attributes include retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplaces, residential, and schools. Our results show that combining all the independent attributes in our study resulted in a higher correlation (0.68) to the dependent value Interquartile 3 (Q3). Mean Absolute Error (MAE) was found to be the least value when combining all attributes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))

► Show Figures

Figure 1

11 pages, 2469 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluating Transmission Heterogeneity and Super-Spreading Event of COVID-19 in a Metropolis of China

by Yunjun Zhang, Yuying Li, Lu Wang, Mingyuan Li and Xiaohua Zhou

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(10), 3705; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103705 - 24 May 2020

Cited by 71 | Viewed by 6989

Abstract

COVID-19 caused rapid mass infection worldwide. Understanding its transmission characteristics, including heterogeneity and the emergence of super spreading events (SSEs) where certain individuals infect large numbers of secondary cases, is of vital importance for prediction and intervention of future epidemics. Here, we collected information of all infected cases (135 cases) between 21 January and 26 February 2020 from official public sources in Tianjin, a metropolis of China, and grouped them into 43 transmission chains with the largest chain of 45 cases and the longest chain of four generations. Utilizing a heterogeneous transmission model based on branching process along with a negative binomial offspring distribution, we estimated the reproductive number R and the dispersion parameter k (lower value indicating higher heterogeneity) to be 0.67 (95% CI: 0.54–0.84) and 0.25 (95% CI: 0.13–0.88), respectively. A super-spreader causing six infections was identified in Tianjin. In addition, our simulation allowing for heterogeneity showed that the outbreak in Tianjin would have caused 165 infections and sustained for 7.56 generations on average if no control measures had been taken by local government since 28 January. Our results highlighted more efforts are needed to verify the transmission heterogeneity of COVID-19 in other populations and its contributing factors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Transmission Dynamics of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Published Papers (6 papers)

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI