Epidemic overdispersion strengthens the effectiveness of mobility restrictions

Abstract

Human mobility is the fuel of global pandemics. In this simulation study, we analyze how mobility restrictions mitigate epidemic processes and how this mitigation is influenced by the epidemic's degree of dispersion. We find that (even imperfect) mobility restrictions are generally efficient in mitigating epidemic spreading. Notably, the effectiveness strongly depends on the dispersion of the offspring distribution associated with the epidemic. We also find that mobility restrictions are useful even when the pathogen is already prevalent in the whole population. However, also a delayed implementation is more efficient in the presence of overdispersion. Conclusively, this means that strategies based on mobility restrictions, like green zones, are easier to implement when the transmission dynamics admits overdispersion (e.g., in the case of COVID-19). To study these relationships at an appropriate level of abstraction, we propose a spatial branching process model combining the flexibility of stochastic branching processes with an agent-based approach allowing a conceptualization of locality, saturation, and interaction structure.