Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 5: Agent-Based Modeling

SOE 5.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 12:45–13:00, H45

Do weekends matter in agent-based models for epidemiology? — •Aleksandr Bryzgalov — Institut für Medizinische Epidemiologie, Biometrie und Informatik (IMEBI) Medizinische Fakultät der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Deutschland

German Epidemic Micro-Simulation System (GEMS) is an agent-based framework that was recently developed to study and analyse the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using GEMS we focused on a study of weekend impact on developing the infection spread throughout the population. We compared the dynamics in two cases: considering only regular days (people have constant contact rates) and considering workdays-weekends(contact rates are specific for workdays and weekends). The total number of contacts was the same in both cases. We used the transmission parameters related to the Omicron (B.1.1.529) pathogen. In our simulations, we varied the distribution of workplace sizes, but the household structure was fixed.

The results show the dependence of total attack rate of workplace size distribution: smaller workplaces in combination with workdays-weekend periodicity produce more infections than the same with only regular days. On the opposite, bigger workplaces in combination with workdays-weekend periodicity produce fewer infections than the same with only regular days.

[1] J. Ponge et al 2023 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), San Antonio, TX, USA, 2023, pp. 1088-1099, doi: 10.1109/WSC60868.2023.10407633.

Keywords: GEMS; workplace size distribution; contact rate; Covid-19