ABSTRACT
The spread of COVID-19 has been among the most devastating events affecting the health and well-being of humans worldwide since World War II. A key scientific goal concerning COVID-19 is to develop mathematical models that help us to understand and predict its spreading behavior, as well as to provide guidelines on what can be done to limit its spread. In this paper, we discuss how our recent work on a multiple-strain spreading model with mutations can help address some key questions concerning the spread of COVID-19. We highlight the recent reports on a mutation of SARS-CoV-2 that is thought to be more transmissible than the original strain and discuss the importance of incorporating mutation and evolutionary adaptations (together with the network structure) in epidemic models. We also demonstrate how the multiplestrain transmission model can be used to assess the effectiveness of mask-wearing in limiting the spread of COVID19. Finally, we present simulation results to demonstrate our ideas and the utility of the multiple-strain model in the context of COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
Masks are used as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to limit transmission and save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research about the impact of mask-wearing in the COVID-19 pandemic has raised formidable interest across multiple disciplines. In this paper, we investigate the impact of mask-wearing in spreading processes over complex networks. This is done by studying a heterogeneous bond percolation process over a multi-type network model, where nodes can be one of two types (mask-wearing, and not-mask-wearing). We provide analytical results that accurately predict the expected epidemic size and probability of emergence as functions of the characteristics of the spreading process (e.g., transmission probabilities, inward and outward efficiency of the masks, etc.), the proportion of mask-wearers in the population, and the structure of the underlying contact network. In addition to the theoretical analysis, we also conduct extensive simulations on random networks. We also comment on the analogy between the mask-model studied here and the multiple-strain viral spreading model with mutations studied recently by Eletreby et al.