Real-time Updating of Dynamic Social Networks for COVID-19 Vaccination Strategies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time network updating method using data assimilation to improve COVID-19 vaccination strategies by accurately identifying high-risk individuals in highly dynamic contact networks.

Contribution

It presents a novel sequential network updating approach that integrates multiple data sources for better vaccination prioritization in time-variant contact networks.

Findings

Assimilation-based approach outperforms standard methods in vaccination effectiveness.

Real-world face-to-face networks demonstrate the method's practical applicability.

Simulations on synthetic networks validate the robustness of the approach.

Abstract

Vaccination strategy is crucial in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the supply is limited, contact network-based interventions can be most powerful to set an optimal strategy by identifying high-risk individuals or communities. However, due to the high dimension, only partial and noisy network information can be available in practice, especially for dynamical systems where the contact networks are highly time-variant. Furthermore, numerous mutations of SARS-CoV-2 impact considerably the current infectious probability, requiring real-time network updating algorithms. In this study, we propose a sequential network updating approach based on data assimilation techniques to combine different sources of temporal information. We then prioritise the individuals with high-degree or high-centrality, obtained from the assimilated networks, for vaccination. The assimilation-based approach is compared with the standard method (based on partially observed networks) and a random selection strategy in terms of vaccination effectiveness in a SIR model. The numerical comparison is first carried out using real-world face-to-face dynamical networks collected in a high school, following by sequential multi-layer networks, generated relying on the Barabasi-Albert model emulating the department of Computing at Imperial College London in the UK as an example.