Frontiers in Physics (Jan 2022)

RiskEstim: A Software Package to Quantify COVID-19 Importation Risk

  • Mingda Xu,
  • Mingda Xu,
  • Mingda Xu,
  • Zhanwei Du,
  • Zhanwei Du,
  • Songwei Shan,
  • Songwei Shan,
  • Xiaoke Xu,
  • Yuan Bai,
  • Yuan Bai,
  • Peng Wu,
  • Peng Wu,
  • Eric H. Y. Lau,
  • Eric H. Y. Lau,
  • Benjamin J. Cowling,
  • Benjamin J. Cowling

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2022.835992
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

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We present an R package developed to quantify coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) importation risk. Quantifying and visualizing the importation risk of COVID-19 from inbound travelers is urgent and imperative to trigger public health responses, especially in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. We provide a general modeling framework to estimate COVID-19 importation risk using estimated pre-symptomatic prevalence of infection and air traffic data from the multi-origin places. We use Hong Kong as a case study to illustrate how our modeling framework can estimate the COVID-19 importation risk into Hong Kong from cities in Mainland China in real time. This R package can be used as a complementary component of the pandemic surveillance system to monitor spread in the next pandemic.

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