BPCPPDYSOE21 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 1: COVID-19 pandemics through the lens of physics (org.: Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad and Philipp Hövel)

SOE 1.7: Talk

Monday, March 22, 2021, 12:00–12:20, SOEa

Discontinuous epidemic transition due to limited testing — Davide Scarselli¹, •Nazmi Burak Budanur¹, Marc Timme², and Björn Hof¹ — ¹Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Am Campus 1, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria — ²Chair for Network Dynamics, Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed), Institute for Theoretical Physics and Center of Excellence Physics of Life, Technical University of Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany

High impact epidemics constitute one of the largest threats humanity is facing in the 21st century. In the absence of pharmaceutical interventions, physical distancing together with testing, contact tracing and quarantining constitute crucial measures in slowing down epidemic dynamics. Yet, here we show that if testing capacities are limited, containment may fail dramatically because such combined countermeasures drastically change the rules of the epidemic transition: Instead of continuous, the response to countermeasures becomes discontinuous [1]. Rather than following the conventional exponential growth, the outbreak that is initially strongly suppressed eventually accelerates and scales faster than exponential during an explosive growth period. As a consequence, containment measures either suffice to stop the outbreak at low total case numbers or fail catastrophically if marginally too weak, thus implying large uncertainties in reliably estimating overall epidemic dynamics, both during initial phases and during second wave scenarios. Reference(s): [1] D. Scarselli, N. B. Budanur, M. Timme, B. Hof. Discontinuous epidemic transition due to limited testing. Under review (2021).