Modelling the impact of travel restrictions on COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong in early 2020

BMC Public Health

Ka-Wai Ho¹  Louis Wai-Tong Fan²  Chun-Ka Wong³  Terence Chi-Chun Tam³  King-Pui Florence Chan³  Samuel Shung-Kay Chan³  Wang-Chun Kwok³  Pak-Leung Ho⁴  Ting-Fung Ma⁵ 

[1] Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA;Department of Mathematics, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA;Department of Medicine, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong, SAR, China;Department of Microbiology and Centre for Infection, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China;Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA;

关键词: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19);    Border restriction;    Susceptible exposed infectious recovered (SEIR) model;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-021-11889-0

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCoronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) led to pandemic that affected almost all countries in the world. Many countries have implemented border restriction as a public health measure to limit local outbreak. However, there is inadequate scientific data to support such a practice, especially in the presence of an established local transmission of the disease.ObjectiveTo apply a metapopulation Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) model with inspected migration to investigate the effect of border restriction as a public health measure to limit outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019.MethodsWe apply a modified metapopulation SEIR model with inspected migration with simulating population migration, and incorporating parameters such as efficiency of custom inspection in blocking infected travelers in the model. The population sizes were retrieved from government reports, while the number of COVID-19 patients were retrieved from Hong Kong Department of Health and China Centre for Disease Control (CDC) data. The R0 was obtained from previous clinical studies.ResultsComplete border closure can help to reduce the cumulative COVID-19 case number and mortality in Hong Kong by 13.99% and 13.98% respectively. To prevent full occupancy of isolation facilities in Hong Kong; effective public health measures to reduce local R0 to below 1.6 was necessary, apart from having complete border closure.ConclusionsEarly complete travel restriction is effective in reducing cumulative cases and mortality. However, additional anti-COVID-19 measures to reduce local R0 to below 1.6 are necessary to prevent COVID-19 cases from overwhelming hospital isolation facilities.

【 授权许可】

CC BY