Beyond Contact Tracing: Community-Based Early Detection for Ebola Response

Conclusions We found that a policy of community response can be effective at combating disease outbreaks without relying on information about infected individual’s contact networks. This highlights the possibility of alternate methods to contact tracing for combating outbreaks. We have shown the policies require a surprisingly low compliance to end the outbreak. Notably, we see that for estimated Ebola parameters, 40% compliance is sufficient, and the cumulative number of infections in an outbreak is not substantially decreased by compliance higher than 60%. We also found that travel restrictions can be used to reduce the risks associated with compliance below 40%, and that the pairing of community-level interventions and travel restrictions can result in saving a substantial fraction of individuals from infection at any level of compliance. Public health interventions implementing variants of these policies have helped the number of active Ebola cases to reach zero in Liberia in March 201525,26. Appendix 1 — SEIR Model We model Ebola using a Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Removed (SEIR) model with a finite, spatially structured population with periodic boundary conditions. In an SEIR model, each individual can be in one of four states of health: S (susceptible): Healthy and capable of being infected. E (exposed): Infected but asymptomatic and incapable of transmitting the illness, otherwise referred to as latently infected. I (infectious): Infect...
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research