Quantifying the impact of contact tracing interview prioritisation strategies on disease transmission: A modelling study

Contact tracing is an important public health measure used to reduce transmission of infectious diseases. Contact tracers typically conduct telephone interviews with cases to identify contacts and direct them to quarantine, with the aim of preventing onward transmission. However, in situations where caseloads exceed the capacity of the public health system, timely interviews may not be feasible for all cases. Here we present a modelling framework for assessing the impact of different case interview prioritisation strategies on disease transmission.

Citation:
Wu L, Baker CM, Tierney N, Carville K, McVernon J, Golding N, McCaw JM, Shearer FM. Quantifying the impact of contact tracing interview prioritisation strategies on disease transmission: A modelling study. PLoS Comput Biol. 2025;21(4).

Keywords:
Covid-19; epidemiology; prevention and control; transmission; computational biology; contact tracing; statistics; numerical data; SARS-Cov-2

Abstract:
Contact tracing is an important public health measure used to reduce transmission of infectious diseases. Contact tracers typically conduct telephone interviews with cases to identify contacts and direct them to quarantine, with the aim of preventing onward transmission. However, in situations where caseloads exceed the capacity of the public health system, timely interviews may not be feasible for all cases. Here we present a modelling framework for assessing the impact of different case interview prioritisation strategies on disease transmission.