10.31234/osf.io/bckn3

Defensive responses to threatening situations vary with threat imminence, but it is unknown how those responses affect decisions to help others. Here, we manipulated threat imminence to investigate the impact of different defensive states on helping behaviour. Ninety-eight participants made trial-by-trial decisions about whether to help a co-participant avoid an aversive shock, at the risk of receiving a shock themselves. Helping decisions were prompted under imminent or distal threat, based on temporal distance to the moment of shock administration to the co-participant. Results showed that, regardless of how likely participants were to also receive a shock, they helped the co-participant more under imminent than distal threat. Individual differences in empathic concern were specifically correlated with helping during imminent threats. These results suggest defensive states driving active escape from immediate danger also facilitate decisions to help others, potentially by engaging neurocognitive systems implicated in caregiving across mammals.

Help or Flight? Increased threat imminence promotes defensive helping in humans

10.1073/pnas.1917687117

10.1037/bul0000232

In this study, we reanalyze recent empirical research on replication from a meta-analytic perspective. We argue that there are different ways to define “replication failure,” and that analyses can focus on exploring variation among replication studies or assess whether their results contradict the findings of the original study. We apply this framework to a set of psychological findings that have been replicated and assess the sensitivity of these analyses. We find that tests for replication that involve only a single replication study are almost always severely underpowered. Among the 40 findings for which ensembles of multisite direct replications were conducted, we find that between 11 and 17 (28% to 43%) ensembles produced heterogeneous effects, depending on how replication is defined. This heterogeneity could not be completely explained by moderators documented by replication research programs. We also find that these ensembles were not always well-powered to detect potentially meaningful values of heterogeneity. Finally, we identify several discrepancies between the results of original studies and the distribution of effects found by multisite replications but note that these analyses also have low power. We conclude by arguing that efforts to assess replication would benefit from further methodological work on designing replication studies to ensure analyses are sufficiently sensitive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Assessing heterogeneity and power in replications of psychological experiments.

10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.015

10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31130-2

10.1038/d41586-020-01221-y

10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30462-1

A basic reproduction number, R0, of about 2 was estimated for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, China, early in the outbreak.1Li Q Guan X Wu P et al.Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia.N Engl J Med. 2020; (published online Jan 29.)DOI:10.1056/NEJMoa2001316Crossref Scopus (426) Google Scholar,  2Riou J Althaus CL Pattern of early human-to-human transmission of Wuhan 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), December 2019 to January 2020.Euro Surveill. 2020; 252000058Crossref Scopus (36) Google Scholar However, this value only captures the average dynamics of transmission; a crucial question for control is whether specific situations and settings might be driving the outbreak. The secondary attack rate (SAR), defined as the probability that an infection occurs among susceptible people within a specific group (ie, household or close contacts), can provide an indication of how social interactions relate to transmission risk.

Secondary attack rate and superspreading events for SARS-CoV-2

10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30136-4

10.1038/s41591-020-0843-2

10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272

Objective: To identify common features of cases with novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) so as to better understand what factors promote secondary transmission including superspreading events. Methods: A total of 110 cases were examined among eleven clusters and sporadic cases, and investigated who acquired infection from whom. The clusters included four in Tokyo and one each in Aichi, Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Ishikawa, Kanagawa and Wakayama prefectures. The number of secondary cases generated by each primary case was calculated using contact tracing data. Results: Of the 110 cases examined, 27 (24.6%) were primary cases who generated secondary cases. The odds that a primary case transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment (95% confidence interval [CI]: 6.0, 57.9). Conclusions: It is plausible that closed environments contribute to secondary transmission of COVID-19 and promote superspreading events. Our findings are also consistent with the declining incidence of COVID-19 cases in China, as gathering in closed environments was prohibited in the wake of the rapid spread of the disease.

Closed environments facilitate secondary transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

10.1098/rspb.2020.0944

10.1038/s41591-020-0863-y

10.31234/osf.io/6a2cx

10.1073/pnas.2006874117

10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30850-3

10.1073/pnas.2005335117

10.31234/osf.io/9vm7r

10.1126/science.367.6484.1287

The United States and Europe have stopped hitting the snooze button. After 2 months of mostly waiting and seeing while the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) alarm sounded ever more loudly, many countries have suddenly implemented strict measures to slow the spread of the disease, which the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared a pandemic on 13 March. Thousands of events have been canceled; schools, restaurants, bars, and clubs have been closed; and transit systems are at a standstill.The countries saw little choice. The case numbers exploded, and, in turn, so did the number of deaths. Hospitals in Italy, the hardest hit European country, are overburdened, forcing doctors to make agonizing decisions about whom to treat and on whom to give up. “This is bad,” U.S. President Donald Trump finally acknowledged on 16 March. “This is war,” his counterpart Emmanuel Macron told the French people the same day.But how to fight that war is still under discussion. The hastily introduced measures vary widely between countries and even within countries. The U.S. government advises against gatherings of more than 10 people, but San Francisco has ordered everyone to stay at home. Italy, France, and Spain have put their populations on an almost complete lockdown, with police or the military in some places patrolling the streets, but as Science went to press, pubs in the United Kingdom remained open. Germany, like many countries, has shut its schools, but they remain open for younger children in Sweden.The patchwork reflects different phases of the epidemic, as well as differences in resources, cultures, governments, and laws. But there's also confusion about what works best, and how to balance what is necessary with what is reasonable, especially for an extended period. South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore seem to hold important lessons, having turned their epidemics around without the authoritarian tactics used by China. Yet some of the strategies adopted in those countries are missing elsewhere: widespread testing to find cases, tracing their contacts to test or quarantine them, and encouraging—or forcing—infected people to isolate themselves.No single step will suffice, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed at a recent press conference. “Not testing alone. Not contact tracing alone. Not quarantine alone. Not social distancing alone. Do it all.”

Countries test tactics in ‘war’ against COVID-19

10.31234/osf.io/kynez

Universities around the world are incorporating online learning, often relying upon videos (asynchronous multimedia). We systematically reviewed the effects of video on learning in higher education. We searched five databases using 27 keywords to find randomised trials that measured the learning effects of video among college students. We conducted full-text screening, data-extraction, and risk of bias in duplicate. We calculated pooled effect-sizes using multi-level random-effects meta-analysis. Searches retrieved 9,677 unique records. After screening 329 full-texts, 103 met inclusion criteria, with a pooled sample of 7,776 students. Swapping video for existing teaching methods led to small improvements in student learning (g = 0.28). Adding video to existing teaching led to strong learning benefits (g = 0.80). Although results may be subject to some experimental and publication biases, they suggest that videos are unlikely to be detrimental and usually improve student learning.

Are you better on YouTube? A systematic review of the effects of video on learning in higher education

10.1126/science.abc3517

10.31235/osf.io/5tch8

10.1038/d41586-020-01003-6

10.31234/osf.io/xgbpy

10.1136/bmj.m1328

10.31234/osf.io/b56qj

10.31234/osf.io/k2rwy

In this first piece, I’ll unpack the assumptions and reasoning that underlie my current view of applied behavioural science. In the second piece, I build on this view by proposing a set of paths to consider going forward.

Is Applied Behavioural Science reaching a Local Maximum?

May 2020

Open science has become a catch all term to describe the many different ways in which digital networked communication technologies have opened and begun to transform research and scholarship across different disciplines, even those outside of the sciences. Whilst this term has been useful, Marcel Knöchelmann argues that for the humanities to successfully adopt digital technologies, rather than have them imposed upon them, they need to develop an independent open humanities discourse.

Open Humanities: Why Open Science in the Humanities is not Enough

The World Pandemic Research Network (WPRN) is a platform serving research communities. It maintains a searchable global directory of the scientific resources available on the societal and human impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. It shows who works on what, where, in real time, at global level. Designed and maintained by researchers, WPRN is free, non-profit, public-funded, open (creative commons, open-source), GDPR compliant. It is steered by an international Advisory Board and supported by major scientific institutions and scientific networks worldwide. WPRN is the product of a collective scientific intelligence, with validation by senior scholars who act as referents in their fields. Register your project on the WPRN platform to get a time-stamped ID that will facilitate scientific collaboration and citation, even before publication.

World Pandemic Research Network

2005.07266

Information is key during a crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic as it greatly shapes people opinion, behaviour and even their psychological state. It has been acknowledged from the Secretary-General of the United Nations that the infodemic of misinformation is an important secondary crisis produced by the pandemic. Infodemics can amplify the real negative consequences of the pandemic in different dimensions: social, economic and even sanitary. For instance, infodemics can lead to hatred between population groups that fragment the society influencing its response or result in negative habits that help the pandemic propagate. On the contrary, reliable and trustful information along with messages of hope and solidarity can be used to control the pandemic, build safety nets and help promote resilience and antifragility. We propose a framework to characterize leaders in Twitter based on the analysis of the social graph derived from the activity in this social network. Centrality metrics are used to identify relevant nodes that are further characterized in terms of users parameters managed by Twitter. We then assess the resulting topology of clusters of leaders. Although this tool may be used for surveillance of individuals, we propose it as the basis for a constructive application to empower users with a positive influence in the collective behaviour of the network and the propagation of information.

Characterizing information leaders in Twitter during COVID-19 crisis

2005.07632

Network-based intervention strategies can be effective and cost-efficient approaches to curtailing harmful contagions in myriad settings. As studied, these strategies are often impractical to implement, as they typically assume complete knowledge of the network structure, which is unusual in practice. In this paper, we investigate how different immunization strategies perform under realistic conditions where the strategies are informed by partially-observed network data. Our results suggest that global immunization strategies, like degree immunization, are optimal in most cases; the exception is at very high levels of missing data, where stochastic strategies, like acquaintance immunization, begin to outstrip them in minimizing outbreaks. Stochastic strategies are more robust in some cases due to the different ways in which they can be affected by missing data. In fact, one of our proposed variants of acquaintance immunization leverages a logistically-realistic ongoing survey-intervention process as a form of targeted data-recovery to improve with increasing levels of missing data. These results support the effectiveness of targeted immunization as a general practice. They also highlight the risks of considering networks as idealized mathematical objects: overestimating the accuracy of network data and foregoing the rewards of additional inquiry.

Immunization Strategies in Networks with Missing Data

2005.07646

One of the most popular narratives about the evolution of law is its perpetual growth in size and complexity. We confirm this claim quantitatively for the federal legislation of two industrialised countries, finding impressive expansion in the laws of Germany and the United States over the past two and a half decades. Modelling 25 years of legislation as multidimensional, time-evolving document networks, we investigate the sources of this development using methods from network science and natural language processing. To allow for cross-country comparisons, we reorganise the legislative materials of the United States and Germany into clusters that reflect legal topics. We show that the main driver behind the growth of the law in both jurisdictions is the expansion of the welfare state, backed by an expansion of the tax state.

Complex Societies and the Growth of the Law

On this page you will find information about:WHO interim guidance for laboratory testingWHO interim guidance for laboratory biosafety related to COVID-19 virusMolecular assays to diagnose COVID-19 virusWHO refence laboratories providing confirmatory testing for COVID-19Guidance for laboratories shipping specimens to WHO reference laboratories that provide confirmatory testing for COVID-19 virusLaboratory Assessment Tool for laboratories implementing COVID-19 testingScientific brief: Advice on the use of point-of-care immunodiagnostic tests for COVID-19

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) technical guidance: Laboratory testing for 2019-nCoV in humans

北海道の鈴木直道知事は28日、新型コロナウイルスの感染拡大を受けて今週末の外出自粛を求める「新型コロナウイルス緊急事態宣言」を出した。北海道内の新型ウイルス感染者は28日も12人増え、66人と全国最多の水準。鈴木知事は道の対策会議で「これまでにない思い切った対策が必要。今が山場」と述べた。

北海道知事が「緊急事態宣言」、週末の外出自粛を要請

InJapan,sporadiccasesofsmallnumbersofpatientshavebeenobserved.Atthisstage,thespreadofinfectioncanbepreventedbytracingtherouteoftransmission,especiallyforclosecontacts.The important thing is to minimize the spread of infection in the country by: preventing one cluster of patients from creating another cluster

Preventing Outbreaks of the Novel Coronavirus

Japan's basic strategy for preventing the spread of infection The three pillars of Japan's strategy are, "early detection of and early response to clusters," "early patient diagnosis and enhancement of intensive care and the securing of a medical service system for the severely ill," and "behavior modification of citizens." This strategy is in line with the strategy recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Government of Japan Expert Meeting on the Novel Coronavirus Disease Control

A team of researchers unveiled the results of a new study last week that looked at how temperature and humidity may affect the transmission of COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.

New study says 'high temperature and high relative humidity significantly reduce' spread of COVID-19

Correction. One of many things that I have learned since I posted this thread in March: "R0" should read "Rt" in this opening tweet.

The symptoms to meet SARS-CoV-2 testing are: patients who have fever >37.5°C/respiratory symptoms & had a close contact history with an infected patient, visited or contacted with those who visited to high risk countries, or may have pneumonia requiring hospitalization. 31/

Second, RT-PCR-based testing generates a lot of false negatives and also false positives. To effectively identify infected patients with limited resource, it is important to focus the testing on patients with high likelihood of COVID-19. https://twitter.com/Dr_yandel/status/1232463168422567937… 30/

First, different countries are using different PCR protocols and primers to detect SAR-CoV-2. What I heard from my microbiologist friend in Japan is that NIID made great efforts to establish a reliable protocol, which is now being used in Japan. https://who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/laboratory-guidance… 29/

So, back to testing. I know that there has been some doubts on COVID-19 case counting in Japan due to low numbers of testing. I have limited information, but I can point out a few things. 28/

What I am hoping to do here is to see if we can learn some hints for a long term solution for COVID-19 from Japan, which is apparently handling the situation relatively well so far. 27/

I'm back. Please keep in mind that the strategy working for Japan may not be directly applicable to cities like NYC, which is facing hospital overloads. For us (New Yorkers), it is important now to do whatever possible to do to suppress the current burst of infections. 26/

OK. Here comes the limit of max tweet numbers in a thread. I'll take some break, and will continue the thread this later. 25/

So how the team was able to successfully detect infected cases? Population of Sapporo, capital of Hokkaido, is 2M. The size of Hokkaido is similar to Maine. I'd like to start with testing. 24/

Thanks to early detection and isolations of patients, a burst of infection in Hokkaido was successfully prevented, and now R0 is maintained below 1. On March 18, the mayor of Hokkaido declared State of Emergency to be terminated next day as has initially planned. 23/

Meanwhile, cluster Response Team of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) and local public health center worked together to isolate patients and their close contacts through PCR testing. 22/

The mayor requested Hokkaido citizens to refrain from going outside during weekends. Public schools were closed from 2/28. Large-scale events were asked to be canceled. https://nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO56188700Y0A220C2L41000/… 21/

On 2/28, State of Emergency was declared in Hokkaido, after detecting 15 and 12 positive cases on 2/27 & 28, respectively. Total# was 66 at that point. 20/

There was Sapporo Snow Festival held from 1/31 to 2/11, where 2M people visited, likely causing clustered infections at this period. A lot of closed, crowded temporal spaces without good ventilation where many tourists gathered, talked and ate foods were generated. 19/

Now, as an example, I'd like to explain a case in Hokkaido, where clusters of COVID-19 were detected from late January. 18/

It is worth noting that following this advice, the government even encourage people to go outside. An opposite of what is happening in NYC. https://twitter.com/Kantei_Saigai/status/1240541777712443393… 17/

1) closed space with poor ventilation 2) crowded with many people 3) conversations and vocalization in close proximity (within arm's reach of one another) 16/

So, the team set the priority to suppress super-spreading events, and urges people to avoid places where the following three conditions were met simultaneously: 15/

Supporting data from Nishiura are available in this preprint. “The odds 44 that a primary case transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment (95% confidence interval [CI]: 6.0, 57.9). “ 14/

"2) Meanwhile, cases have been reported where a single infected patient has transmitted the infection to multiple persons in areas such as athletic gyms, houseboats, buffet style meals, mahjong rooms, guest houses at ski resorts, and air-tight provisional tents." 13/

"1) So far, approximately 80% of the confirmed infection cases in Japan have not transmitted the infection to others." 12/

Cluster Response Team of Ministry of Health, lead by Hiroshi Nishiura, Prof at Hokkaido Univ. and an expert of mathematical modeling of infectious disease, defined characteristics of the transmission rout as: 11/

The underlying principle is laid out in this handout by MHLW. “The important thing is to minimize the spread of infection in the country by preventing one cluster of patients from creating another cluster.” 10/

1) early detection of and early response to clusters 2)early patient diagnosis and enhancement of intensive care and the securing of a medical service system for the severely ill 3) behavior modification of citizens 9/

The Government of Japan, Cluster Response Team of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) has stated The three pillars of Japan's strategy:

Remember that a lot of tourists from China visited Japan during Chinese New Year. There was also a case of Diamond Princess. However, they did not trigger catastrophe. So how did Japanese do? 7/

If the R0≅1 can be maintained with this minimum restrain, and if the R01 can be naturally reduced when humid summer arrives, there is a reasonable chance that the society can maintain good activities without risking hospital overload. 6/

Although most sports and music events have been cancelled in Japan, a large majority of people go outside and work, and restaurants are open. Schools are currently spring break period, but they are trying to open in April. 5/

The future of next 2 years predicted by Fergusson is depressing, as it demands strong restriction of school/university and business to accomplish R<1. In Japan, so far R0≅1 has been accomplished with volunteer-based cancellations of large-scale events, and school closures. 4/

Many of you are now familiar with a simulation analysis of Fergusson et al, indicating that mitigation (R0<1) is not sufficient to prevent hospital overload, while suppression (R0<1) would take years to gain herd immunity until we get vaccines. 3/

Disclaimer: I am a cell biologist studying mitosis, and not an expert of infectious disease. I've gathered most information is from internet. It would be great if experts @PaulBieniasz, @danmucida, @VirusesImmunity & others . 2/

It is perplexing to see that the article ignores tactics of Japan, where R0 of COVID-19 is clearly lower. The purpose of this thread is to search for reasons why Japan has been successful. 1/

RT @thehowie: #SouthKorea follow-up 0.19% positive rate with 13 new cases (7 imported; 5 from #itaewon CONTACTS (not from the clubs); 1 new…

The stigma associated with this outbreak will reverberate for some time. It would be a problem for any country to find infection with #SARSCoV2 associated with stigma: it will make testing, contact tracing, and isolation more difficult. Yet we know it is already present. 3/3

19 new cases found today: 10 were imported; 1 was a visitor to the #Itaewon clubs; 5 were contacts of #Itaewon cases. 3 were new community spread cases. < 0.1% positive rate (a new low), with 13.9K tests done. cCFR 2.4%. 2/3

#SouthKorea 88+ patrons got #Covid19 from (presumably) a single contact in #Itaewon on May 1/2. 74 additional cases have been found from contacts. While testing goes on, they have this under control. Homophobia will take longer to extinguish.

A cluster of coronavirus cases connected to clubs frequented by South Korea's gay community has sparked an outpouring of hate speech towards the country's already-embattled LGBTQ population.

Virus outbreak linked to Seoul clubs popular with LGBT community stokes homophobia

Institutions are letting their financial and reputational worries cloud their judgment about when they can safely reopen.

Colleges Are Deluding Themselves

Our health and lives cannot be ruled by market forces alone. Now thousands of scholars are calling for a way out of the crisis

Humans are not resources. Coronavirus shows why we must democratise work

RT @EricTopol: To date, Africa, with a population of >1.2 billion, has only had a small fraction of #COVID19 deaths and < 80,000 confirmed…

On Wednesday, the number of new coronavirus cases reported in South Korea fell to less than 100 for the fourth day in a row, a figure markedly down from the peak of 909 new cases reported on February 29. While there are signs that the Korean outbreak is starting to ebb, the United States, on the other hand, is only beginning to confront the true magnitude of the global pandemic. Each day, it seems, brings news of new closures, increasingly stringent guidance on social distancing, and new proposals to combat the outbreak and prop up the tanking economy. Amid an increasingly dire crisis, public health experts in the United States are citing Korea as a success story. “Do we want to go the direction of South Korea and really be aggressive and lower our mortality rates, or do we want to go the direction of Italy?” US Surgeon General Jerome Adams asked in a TV interview this week.

South Korea learned its successful Covid-19 strategy from a previous coronavirus outbreak: MERS

Without enough test kits, the 1.3-billion-person country is using a gigantic surveillance network to trace and quarantine infected people.

People power: How India is attempting to slow the coronavirus

This is meant to highlight some of the best aspects I see, and is not an endorsement of these countries’ overall strategies. There is still a long way to go, but we should pay close attention to how even places with limited resources respond (= hard work, people power). 7/7

In South Africa, the government has deployed 28,000 health workers to test and screen communities across the country, drawing on the health infrastructure that had been built in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 6/7

South Korea learned a lot of valuable lessons during their 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak, particularly strengthening surveillance systems, diagnostic capacity, and hospital infection control. 5/7

India is leveraging an existing gigantic integrated disease surveillance network to trace and quarantine infected people. Interestingly, these networks are strongest in the poorest areas. 4/7

The Ugandan health authorities are testing around 1,000 truck drivers a day. But many of those who test positive have come from Tanzania and Kenya, countries that are not monitoring as aggressively. 3/7

Sierra Leone repurposed disease-tracking protocols established for Ebola. The government set up emergency operations centers in every district and recruited 14,000 community health workers, including 1,500 contact tracers. 2/7

In comparing outbreaks across countries, I think there is a lot of luck involved in the timing (it’s when, not if). But places that have faced outbreaks in the past have a collective memory and can respond quickly. Highlighting a few examples. 1/7

Experts are trying to figure out why the coronavirus is so capricious. The answers could determine how to best protect ourselves and how long we have to.

The Covid-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others?

We carried out a formative research for developing a structured hand-washing promotion in three municipalities of Bardiya district of Nepal. The research comprised of baseline survey in randomly selected 600 households along with survey on behavioral factors of RANAS (risks, attitude, norm, ability, and self-efficacy) and qualitative assessment of behavioral determinants of barriers and benefits among the doers and non-doers of hand-washing. The survey, assessment and subsequent intervention design were guided by different aspects we found relevant from the following theories and framework: (i) stages of change; (ii) diffusion of innovation; (iii) user centered design; (iv) social marketing; and (v) behavioral economics. The following have been identified among others to be considered while developing the promotion program in close consultation with the target audience: (a) to work on Attitude and Norm (shown by RANAS survey); (b) emphasize hand washing after cleaning child’s bottom and before feeding a child (shown by baseline survey); (c) promote hand-washing stations (as 92% now wash their hands at the tube wells only); (d) target reducing perceived barriers and increasing perceived benefits (from social marketing), nudging (a concept from behavioral economics) where possible; and (e) work with innovators and early adopters first (from diffusion of innovation). A two pager guide with objectives, overall strategy (including for communication) and activities has also been prepared for piloting and further adjusting the strategy before scaling it in a larger area mobilizing a wider stakeholders (such as municipalities, health-posts and schools) and using mass communications and broader distribution channels.

“FORMATIVE RESEARCH” FOR SYSTEMATIC BEHAVIOR CHANGE PROGRAM DESIGN

Despite the daily updates on number of cases, hospital admissions, and deaths around the world and the increasing number of hospital-based case series, some of the fundamental information about how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spreads in the population and who is really at risk of both infection and severe consequences is still missing. In The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Simon de Lusignan and colleagues1de Lusignan S Dorward J Correa A et al.Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 among patients in the Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Research and Surveillance Centre primary care network: a cross-sectional study.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online May 15.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30371-6Google Scholar report on the characteristics of the first 3802 people tested for SARS-CoV-2 within the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) sentinel primary care surveillance network. Unlike most previous studies that examined risk factors for poor prognosis,2Yang J Zheng Y Gou X et al.Prevalence of comorbidities and its effects in coronavirus disease 2019 patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Int J Infect Dis. 2020; 94: 91-95Google Scholar,  3Chen T Wu D Chen H et al.Clinical characteristics of 113 deceased patients with coronavirus disease 2019: retrospective study.BMJ. 2020; 368m1091Google Scholar de Lusignan and colleagues1de Lusignan S Dorward J Correa A et al.Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 among patients in the Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Research and Surveillance Centre primary care network: a cross-sectional study.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online May 15.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30371-6Google Scholar report characteristics associated with susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Who is most likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2?

In December, 2019, COVID-19 was recognised as a novel respiratory disease in Wuhan, China,1Guan WJ Ni ZY Hu Y et al.Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China.N Engl J Med. 2020; (published online Feb 28.)DOI:10.1056/NEJMoa2002032Google Scholar caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).2Zhu N Zhang D Wang W et al.A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019.N Engl J Med. 2020; 382: 727-733Google Scholar Accurate and reliable data on SARS-CoV-2 incubation time, secondary attack rate, and transmission dynamics are key to successful containment. In late January, 2020, infection with SARS-CoV-2 was detected in Germany for the first time. By rapid response, the public health authorities identified a business meeting in a Bavarian company as the primary transmission site and a participating Chinese employee who had travelled from Shanghai to Munich as the index patient.3Rothe C Schunk M Sothmann P et al.Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an asymptomatic contact in Germany.N Engl J Med. 2020; 382: 970-971Google Scholar Subsequently, the rigorous investigation of contacts led to detection of 16 people infected with SARS-CoV-2 and to successful containment of this outbreak. This well defined event with limited extent of transmission enabled Merle Böhmer and colleagues to provide a meticulous description of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics in an Article published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.4Böhmer MM Buchholz U Corman VM et al.Investigation of a COVID-19 outbreak in Germany resulting from a single travel-associated primary case: a case series.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online May 15.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30314-5Google Scholar The authors did standard and in-depth interviews with case patients and household members to determine the characteristics and the onset of symptoms. Data were used for calculation of SARS-CoV-2 secondary attack rates, defined as the probability that an infection occurs among susceptible people within the incubation period.5Liu Y Eggo RM Kucharski AJ Secondary attack rate and superspreading events for SARS-CoV-2.Lancet. 2020; 395: e47Google Scholar In addition, whole genome sequencing of virus isolates was done in 15 of the 16 cases. As a result, Böhmer and colleagues report a detailed transmission network of the outbreak, which is accurately displayed in the main figure of the Article

Importance of precise data on SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics control