High infectiousness immediately before COVID-19 symptom onset highlights the importance of continued contact tracing

Abstract

Background: Understanding changes in infectiousness during SARS-COV-2 infections is critical to assess the effectiveness of public health measures such as contact tracing. Methods: Here, we develop a novel mechanistic approach to infer the infectiousness profile of SARS-COV-2-infected individuals using data from known infector–infectee pairs. We compare estimates of key epidemiological quantities generated using our mechanistic method with analogous estimates generated using previous approaches. Results: The mechanistic method provides an improved fit to data from SARS-CoV-2 infector–infectee pairs compared to commonly used approaches. Our best-fitting model indicates a high proportion of presymptomatic transmissions, with many transmissions occurring shortly before the infector develops symptoms. Conclusions: High infectiousness immediately prior to symptom onset highlights the importance of continued contact tracing until effective vaccines have been distributed widely, even if contacts from a short time window before symptom onset alone are traced. Funding: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).