The impact of homophily on digital proximity tracing

Abstract

We study how homophily of human physical interactions affects the efficacy of digital proximity tracing. Analytical results show a non monotonous dependence of the reproduction number with respect to the mixing rate between individuals that adopt the contact tracing app and the ones that do not. Furthermore, we find regimes in which the attack rate has local optima, minima or monotonously varies with the mixing rate. We corroborate our findings with Monte Carlo simulations on a primary-school network. This study provides a mathematical basis to better understand how homophily in health behavior shapes the dynamics of epidemics.

References in corpus (2)

• Statistical physics of vaccination
• Virus spread versus contact tracing: two competing contagion processes

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Herd Immunity and Epidemic Size in Networks with Vaccination Homophily
• Epidemic Spreading and Digital Contact Tracing: Effects of Heterogeneous Mixing and Quarantine Failures
• Polarized opinion states in static networks driven by limited information horizons
• Spreading dynamics in networks under context-dependent behavior
• Strength and weakness of disease-induced herd immunity in networks
• Limited efficacy of forward contact tracing in epidemics
• Epidemics on evolving networks with varying degrees