How the reversible change of contact network affects the epidemic spreading

TL;DR

This paper investigates how reversible changes in contact networks, modeled as freeze-recovery processes, influence epidemic spreading, revealing that an optimal contact freezing rate can minimize outbreaks and that external infection sources can cause second waves.

Contribution

It introduces a time-varying network model with reversible contact links to study epidemic dynamics, highlighting the non-monotonic effect of contact freezing and the impact of external infections.

Findings

Optimal freezing rate minimizes epidemic prevalence.

Reversible contact changes can cause epidemic resurgence.

External infection sources lead to second waves.

Abstract

The mobility patterns of individuals in China during the early outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic exhibit reversible changes -- in many regions, the mobility first decreased significantly and later restored. Based on this observation, here we study the classical SIR model on a particular type of time-varying network where the links undergo a freeze-recovery process. We first focus on an isolated network and find that the recovery mechanism could lead to the resurgence of an epidemic. The influence of link freezing on epidemic dynamics is subtle. In particular, we show that there is an optimal value of the freezing rate for links which corresponds to the lowest prevalence of the epidemic. This result challenges our conventional idea that stricter prevention measures (corresponding to a larger freezing rate) could always have a better inhibitory effect on epidemic spreading. We further investigate an open system where a small fraction of nodes in the network may acquire the disease from the "environment" (the outside infected nodes). In this case, the second wave would appear even if the number of infected nodes has declined to zero, which can not be explained by the isolated network model.