Secondary Household Covid-19 Transmission Modelling of Students Returning Home from University

Abstract

We estimate the number of secondary Covid-19 infections caused by potentially infectious students returning from university to private homes with other occupants. Using a Monte-Carlo method and data derived from UK sources, we predict that an infectious student would, on average, infect 0.94 other household members. Or, as a rule of thumb, each infected student would generate (just less than) one secondary within-household infection. The total number of secondary cases for all returning students is dependent on the virus prevalence within the student population at the time of their departure from campus back home. Correspondingly, we provide results for prevalence ranging from 0.5% to 15%, which is based on observed minimum and maximum estimates from Cardiff University’s asymptomatic testing service. Although the proposed estimation method is general and robust, the results are sensitive to the input data. We therefore provide Matlab code and a helpful online app (http://bit.ly/Secondary_infections_app) that can be used to estimate numbers of secondary infections based on local parameter values.