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Infectious Disease in the Workplace: Quantifying Uncertainty in Transmission
Jonathan I D Hamley1,2,3, Guido Beldi4,5,6, Daniel Sánchez-Taltavull7,8
1Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Bulletin of Mathematical Biology
|February 1, 2024
Summary
Workplace disease outbreaks involve uncertainty due to small populations. This study quantifies how community transmission, workforce size, and individual variations impact outbreak uncertainty, informing policy and modeling.
Area of Science:
- Epidemiology and Public Health
- Mathematical Modeling
- Occupational Health
Background:
- Understanding disease transmission in workplaces is crucial for worker protection.
- Small workplace populations necessitate considering stochastic effects, leading to uncertainty in outbreak modeling.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify and interpret the uncertainty in workplace disease outbreak models.
- To assess the impact of various factors on outbreak uncertainty.
Main Methods:
- Developed a multiscale model with deterministic community and stochastic workplace transmission components.
- Extended the model to include spatial structure and heterogeneity in worker susceptibility and infectiousness.
Main Results:
- Found a non-monotonic relationship between workplace transmission rate and coefficient of variation (CV) as a measure of uncertainty.
- Decreased CV with increased community transmission, workforce size, and susceptibility heterogeneity.
- Increased CV with increased spatial structure and infectiousness heterogeneity.
- Noted CV's limitation in capturing uncertainty with bimodal distributions.
Conclusions:
- Model complexity significantly impacts workplace outbreak uncertainty.
- Workforce size, community/workplace transmission, spatial structure, and individual heterogeneity uniquely influence outbreak size distributions.
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