@article{nokey,

title = {High-resolution estimates of social distancing feasibility, mapped for urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa},

author = {Heather R. Chamberlain and Attila N. Lazar and Andrew J. Tatem },

doi = {10.1038/s41597-022-01799-0},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-11-18},

journal = {Scientific Data},

volume = {9},

number = {711},

abstract = {Social distancing has been widely-implemented as a public health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite widespread application of social distancing guidance, the feasibility of people adhering to such guidance varies in different settings, influenced by population density, the built environment and a range of socio-economic factors. Social distancing constraints however have only been identified and mapped for limited areas. Here, we present an ease of social distancing index, integrating metrics on urban form and population density derived from new multi-country building footprint datasets and gridded population estimates. The index dataset provides estimates of social distancing feasibility, mapped at high-resolution for urban areas across 50 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.},

keywords = {Africa, covid-19, NPIs},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Untangling the changing impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccination on European COVID-19 trajectories},

author = {Ge, Yong and Zhang, Wen-Bin and Wu, Xilin and Ruktanonchai, Corrine W and Liu, Haiyan and Wang, Jianghao and Song, Yongze and Liu, Mengxiao and Yan, Wei and Yang, Juan and Cleary, Eimear and Qader, Sarchil H. and Atuhaire, Fatumah and Ruktanonchai, Nick W. and Tatem, Andrew J. and Lai Shengjie },

doi = {10.1038/s41467-022-30897-1},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-06-03},

urldate = {2022-06-03},

journal = {Nature Communications},

volume = {13},

issue = {3106},

abstract = {Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and vaccination are two fundamental approaches for mitigating the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the real-world impact of NPIs versus vaccination, or a combination of both, on COVID-19 remains uncertain. To address this, we built a Bayesian inference model to assess the changing effect of NPIs and vaccination on reducing COVID-19 transmission, based on a large-scale dataset including epidemiological parameters, virus variants, vaccines, and climate factors in Europe from August 2020 to October 2021. We found that (1) the combined effect of NPIs and vaccination resulted in a 53% (95% confidence interval: 42–62%) reduction in reproduction number by October 2021, whereas NPIs and vaccination reduced the transmission by 35% and 38%, respectively; (2) compared with vaccination, the change of NPI effect was less sensitive to emerging variants; (3) the relative effect of NPIs declined 12% from May 2021 due to a lower stringency and the introduction of vaccination strategies. Our results demonstrate that NPIs were complementary to vaccination in an effort to reduce COVID-19 transmission, and the relaxation of NPIs might depend on vaccination rates, control targets, and vaccine effectiveness concerning extant and emerging variants.},

keywords = {covid-19, Europe, NPIs, vaccination},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Influenza’s plummeting during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of mask-wearing, mobility change, and SARS-CoV-2 interference},

author = {Shasha Han and Ting Zhang and Yan Lyu and Shengjie Lai and Peixi Dai and Jiandong Zheng and Weizhong Yang and Xiao-Hua Zhou and Luzhao Feng},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2021.12.011},

issn = {2095-8099},

year  = {2022},

date = {2022-02-02},

urldate = {2022-02-02},

journal = {Engineering},

abstract = {Seasonal influenza activity typically peaks in the winter months but plummeted globally during the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Unraveling lessons from influenza’s unprecedented low profile is critical in informing preparedness for incoming influenza seasons. Here, we explored a country-specific inference model to estimate the effects of mask-wearing, mobility changes (international and domestic), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) interference in China, England, and the United States. We found that a one-week increase in mask-wearing intervention had a percent reduction of 11.3%–35.2% in influenza activity in these areas. The one-week mobility mitigation had smaller effects for the international (1.7%–6.5%) and the domestic community (1.6%–2.8%). In 2020–2021, the mask-wearing intervention alone could decline percent positivity by 13.3–19.8. The mobility change alone could reduce percent positivity by 5.2–14.0, of which 79.8%–98.2% were attributed to the deflected international travel. Only in 2019–2020, SARS-CoV-2 interference had statistically significant effects. There was a reduction in percent positivity of 7.6 (2.4–14.4) and 10.2 (7.2–13.6) in northern China and England, respectively. Our results have implications for understanding how influenza evolves under non-pharmaceutical interventions and other respiratory diseases and will inform health policy and the design of tailored public health measures.},

keywords = {covid-19, influenza, NPIs},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Impacts of worldwide individual non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission across waves and space},

author = {Yong Ge and Wen-Bin Zhang and Haiyan Liu and Corrine W Ruktanonchai and Maogui Hu and Xilin Wu and Yongze Song and Nick W Ruktanonchai and Wei Yan and Eimear Cleary and Luzhao Feng and Zhongjie Li and Weizhong Yang and Mengxiao Liu and Andrew J Tatem and Jin-Feng Wang and and Shengjie Lai},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102649},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-12-13},

urldate = {2021-12-13},

journal = {International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation},

volume = {106},

abstract = {Governments worldwide have rapidly deployed non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the effect of these individual NPI measures across space and time has yet to be sufficiently assessed, especially with the increase of policy fatigue and the urge for NPI relaxation in the vaccination era. Using the decay ratio in the suppression of COVID-19 infections and multi-source big data, we investigated the changing performance of different NPIs across waves from global and regional levels (in 133 countries) to national and subnational (in the United States of America [USA]) scales before the implementation of mass vaccination. The synergistic effectiveness of all NPIs for reducing COVID-19 infections declined along waves, from 95.4% in the first wave to 56.0% in the third wave recently at the global level and similarly from 83.3% to 58.7% at the USA national level, while it had fluctuating performance across waves on regional and subnational scales. Regardless of geographical scale, gathering restrictions and facial coverings played significant roles in epidemic mitigation before the vaccine rollout. Our findings have important implications for continued tailoring and implementation of NPI strategies, together with vaccination, to mitigate future COVID-19 waves, caused by new variants, and other emerging respiratory infectious diseases.},

keywords = {covid-19, NPIs},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Domestic and international mobility trends in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of facebook data},

author = {Shepherd, Harry ER and Atherden, Florence S and Chan, Ho Man Theophilus and Loveridge, Alexandra and Tatem, Andrew J},

doi = {10.1186/s12942-021-00299-5},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-12-04},

urldate = {2021-12-04},

journal = {International Journal of Health Geographics},

volume = {20},

number = {46},

abstract = {Since early March 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic across the United Kingdom has led to a range of social distancing policies, which resulted in changes to mobility across different regions. An understanding of how these policies impacted travel patterns over time and at different spatial scales is important for designing effective strategies, future pandemic planning and in providing broader insights on the population geography of the country. Crowd level data on mobile phone usage can be used as a proxy for population mobility patterns and provide a way of quantifying in near-real time the impact of social distancing measures on changes in mobility.



Methods

Here we explore patterns of change in densities, domestic and international flows and co-location of Facebook users in the UK from March 2020 to March 2021.



Results

We find substantial heterogeneities across time and region, with large changes observed compared to pre-pademic patterns. The impacts of periods of lockdown on distances travelled and flow volumes are evident, with each showing variations, but some significant reductions in co-location rates. Clear differences in multiple metrics of mobility are seen in central London compared to the rest of the UK, with each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland showing significant deviations from England at times. Moreover, the impacts of rapid changes in rules on international travel to and from the UK are seen in substantial fluctuations in traveller volumes by destination.



Conclusions

While questions remain about the representativeness of the Facebook data, previous studies have shown strong correspondence with census-based data and alternative mobility measures, suggesting that findings here are valuable for guiding strategies.},

keywords = {covid-19, Europe, Mobility, NPIs, United Kingdom},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Methods and Applications: The Incoming Influenza Season — China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, 2021–2022},

author = {Han, Shasha and Zhang, Ting and Lyu, Yan and Lai, Shengjie and Dai, Peixi and Zheng, Jiandong and Yang, Weizhong and Zhou, Xiaohua and Feng, Luzhao},

doi = {10.46234/ccdcw2021.253},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-12-03},

urldate = {2021-12-03},

journal = {China CDC Weekly},

volume = {3},

number = {49},

pages = {1039},

abstract = {Seasonal influenza activity has declined globally since the widespread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. There has been scarce information to understand the future dynamics of influenza — and under different hypothesis on relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in particular — after the disruptions to seasonal patterns.



Methods

We collected data from public sources in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and forecasted the influenza dynamics in the incoming 2021–2022 season under different NPIs. We considered Northern China and Southern China separately, due to the sharp difference in the patterns of seasonal influenza. For the United Kingdom, data were collected for England only.



Results

Compared to the epidemics in 2017–2019, longer and blunter influenza outbreaks could occur should NPIs be fully lifted, with percent positivity varying from 10.5 to 18.6 in the studying regions. The rebounds would be smaller if the mask-wearing intervention continued or the international mobility stayed low, but sharper if the mask-wearing intervention was lifted in the middle of influenza season. Further, influenza activity could stay low under a much less stringent mask-wearing intervention coordinated with influenza vaccination.



Conclusions

The results added to our understandings of future influenza dynamics after the global decline during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In light of the uncertainty on the incoming circulation strains and the relatively low negative impacts of mask wearing on society, our findings suggested that wearing mask could be considered as an accompanying mitigation measure in influenza prevention and control, especially for seasons after long periods of low-exposure to influenza viruses.},

keywords = {influenza, Mobility, NPIs, Predictive clustering},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Rapid and sustained containment of covid-19 is achievable and worthwhile: implications for pandemic response},

author = {Chen, Qiulan and Rodewald, Lance and Lai, Shengjie and Gao, George F},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1136/BMJ-2021-066169},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-12-02},

urldate = {2021-12-02},

journal = {BMJ},

volume = {375},

number = {e066169},

abstract = {In the 20 months since the World Health Organization declared covid-19 to be a pandemic, more than 250 million cases have been confirmed. More than 5 million deathshave occurred disproportionately by country, with 10% of countries reporting 80% of cases.1 In a new pandemic, with no vaccines prepared, non-pharmaceutical interventions are the only response. In the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, several countries that aimed to completely interrupt community transmission—China, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand—achieved and maintained containment.23 Here, we analyse China’s containment strategy before vaccine roll-out and describe measures for initial and sustained containment and benefits for the country.



Containment of covid-19 means stopping transmission of SARS-CoV-2.4 Core measures of containment include actively finding infected people and treatment in isolation, close contact tracing and quarantine, and restrictions of travel from areas with community transmission. Additional measures that reduce transmission include stay at home orders, cancellation of mass gatherings, closing schools, and use of personal protection measures, such as hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, keeping at least 1 m distance, and mask wearing.



Sustained containment is maintaining elimination of SARS-CoV-2 by completely stopping all externally introduced outbreaks—a policy of “zero tolerance for local transmission (zero covid).” Responses to an outbreak are based on an assessment of the epidemic risk and use the same measures as those used for the initial containment. These measures are augmented by strict border protection to minimise the number of imported outbreaks and by surveillance for infection using highly sensitive, routine polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Table 1 shows the initial and sustained containment measures based on assessment of the risk of epidemic.



},

keywords = {covid-19, NPIs},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}