Importance of interaction structure and stochasticity for epidemic spreading: a COVID-19 case study (Q2056993)

The authors argue that ``deterministic models fitted to COVID-19 outbreak data have limited predictive power or may even lead to wrong conclusions while stochastic models taking interaction structure into account offer different and probably more realistic epidemiological insights.'' This claim is based on the translation of a model for COVID-19 spread suggested by \textit{S. Khailaie} et al. [``Estimate of the development of the epidemic reproduction number RT from coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 case data and implications for political measures based on prognostics'', Preprint, \url{https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053637v1.full.pdf}] to a stochastic multi-agent system and consecutive use of a contact network to mimic complex interaction structures. The authors conclude that the dynamics of the epidemics depends significantly on the structure of the underlying contact graph and argue that this influence is not adequately captured by existing ODE-models. They claim that ``the interaction structure has a crucial impact on the spreading dynamics, which exceeds the effects of other parameters such as the basic reproduction number \(\mathcal{R}_0\)'' calling for further investigations of the influence of non-Markovian dynamics, the reconstruction of more realistic contact networks and analysis of worst-case trajectories. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1475.68022].