It Is the Contact Network Density that Influences Transmission Rates (IMAGE)
Caption
Contact network of employees in an office building in France, thresholded according to the number of contacts. In (a) all links are shown that connect two persons with more than 100 encounters, (b) and (c) show the cases for 200 and 500 encounters. In the densest network (a) almost all employees get infected (red). Only a few with weak ties to the network's core stay healthy (green). The same is true for the less dense network (b). Below a certain link density, things change abruptly (c): only a few infection clusters appear, while the majority remains healthy. This is the typical pattern observed in the COVID-19 pandemic when implementing social distancing measures. That shows the importance of reducing the network density below the critical point. The proof of the existence of such a critical point is the main contribution of the paper. The practical message is: Non pharmaceutical interventions should be able to bring social network density below that point.
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CSH Vienna
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