Temporal contact patterns and the implications for predicting superspreaders and planning of targeted outbreak control

Epidemic models often heavily simplify the dynamics of human-to-human contacts, but the resulting bias in outbreak dynamics - and hence requirements for control measures - remains unclear. Even if high resolution temporal contact data were routinely used for modelling, the role of this temporal network structure towards outbreak control is not well characterised. We address this by assessing dynamic networks across varied social settings and developing a novel metric to measure contact retention over time and to identify highly connected individuals. Using 11 networks from 5 settings studied over 3-10 days, we estimated that more than 80% of the individuals in most settings were highly connected for only short periods. This suggests a challenge to identify 'superspreaders', and more individuals would need to be targeted as part of outbreak interventions to achieve the same reduction in transmission as predicted from a static network. Taking into account repeated contacts over multiple days, we estimated simple resource planning models might overestimate the number of contacts made by an infector by 20%-70%. In workplaces and schools, contacts in the same department accounted for most of the retained contacts. Hence, outbreak control measures would be better off targeting specific sub-populations in these settings to reduce transmission. In contrast, no obvious type of contact dominated the retained contacts in hospitals, so reducing the risk of disease introduction is critical to avoid disrupting the interdependent work functions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement RP acknowledges funding from the Singapore Ministry of Health. AJK was supported by a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society (grant 206250/Z/17/Z). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: The study used ONLY openly available human data that were originally located at: [1] R. Pung, J. A. Firth, L. G. Spurgin, V. J. Lee, A. J. Kucharski, Using high-resolution contact networks to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 transmission and control in large-scale multi-day events. Nat Commun 13, 1956 (2022). [2] S. M. Kissler, P. Klepac, M. Tang, A. J. K. Conlan, J. R. Gog, Sparking 'The BBC Four Pandemic': Leveraging citizen science and mobile phones to model the spread of disease. 479154 (2020). [3] R. Mastrandrea, J. Fournet, A. Barrat, Contact Patterns in a High School: A Comparison between Data Collected Using Wearable Sensors, Contact Diaries and Friendship Surveys. PLOS ONE 10, e0136497 (2015). [4] J. Fournet, A. Barrat, Contact Patterns among High School Students. PLOS ONE 9, e107878 (2014). [3] P. Vanhems, et al., Estimating Potential Infection Transmission Routes in Hospital Wards Using Wearable Proximity Sensors. PLOS ONE 8, e73970 (2013). [5] M. Genois, et al., Data on face-to-face contacts in an office building suggest a low-cost vaccination strategy based on community linkers. Network Science 3, 326-347 (2015). [6] M. Genois, A. Barrat, Can co-location be used as a proxy for face-to-face contacts? EPJ Data Sci. 7, 1-18 (2018). I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes All data produced in the present work are contained in the manuscript