Complex Contact Network of Patients at the Beginning of an Epidemic Outbreak: An Analysis Based on 1218 COVID-19 Cases in China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
; 19(2)2022 01 08.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1613791
ABSTRACT
The spread of viruses essentially occurs through the interaction and contact between people, which is closely related to the network of interpersonal relationships. Based on the epidemiological investigations of 1218 COVID-19 cases in eight areas of China, we use text analysis, social network analysis and visualization methods to construct a dynamic contact network of the epidemic. We analyze the corresponding demographic characteristics, network indicators, and structural characteristics of this network. We found that more than 65% of cases are likely to be infected by a strong relationship, and nearly 40% of cases have family members infected at the same time. The overall connectivity of the contact network is low, but there are still some clustered infections. In terms of the degree distribution, most cases' degrees are concentrated between 0 and 2, which is relatively low, and only a few ones have a higher degree value. The degree distribution also conforms to the power law distribution, indicating the network is a scale-free network. There are 17 cases with a degree greater than 10, and these cluster infections are usually caused by local transmission. The first implication of this research is we find that the COVID-19 spread is closely related to social structures by applying computational sociological methods for infectious disease studies; the second implication is to confirm that text analysis can quickly visualize the spread trajectory at the beginning of an epidemic.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Epidemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Ijerph19020689
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