Rapid assessment of the risk of SARS-CoV-2 importation: case study and lessons learned

Freya M Shearer; James Walker; Nefel Tellioglu; James M McCaw; Jodie McVernon; Andrew Black; Nicholas Geard

doi:10.1016/j.epidem.2022.100549

Rapid assessment of the risk of SARS-CoV-2 importation: case study and lessons learned

Epidemics. 2022 Mar:38:100549. doi: 10.1016/j.epidem.2022.100549. Epub 2022 Feb 24.

Authors

Freya M Shearer¹, James Walker², Nefel Tellioglu³, James M McCaw⁴, Jodie McVernon⁵, Andrew Black², Nicholas Geard⁶

Affiliations

¹ Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
² School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia.
³ School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
⁴ Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia; Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and The University of Melbourne, Australia; School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
⁵ Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia; Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and The University of Melbourne, Australia; Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, The Royal Children's Hospital, Australia.
⁶ School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Australia; Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and The University of Melbourne, Australia. Electronic address: ngeard@unimelb.edu.au.

Abstract

During the early stages of an emerging disease outbreak, governments are required to make critical decisions on how to respond, despite limited data being available to inform these decisions. Analytical risk assessment is a valuable approach to guide decision-making on travel restrictions and border measures during the early phase of an outbreak. Here we describe a rapid risk assessment framework that was developed in February 2020 to support time-critical decisions on the risk of SARS-CoV-2 importation into Australia. We briefly describe the context in which our framework was developed, the framework itself, and provide an example of the type of decision support provided to the Australian government. We then report a critical evaluation of the modelling choices made in February 2020, assessing the impact of our assumptions on estimated rates of importation, and provide a summary of "lessons learned". The framework presented and evaluated here provides a flexible approach to rapid assessment of importation risk, of relevance to current and future pandemic scenarios.

Keywords: Australia; COVID-19; Decision support; Pandemic; Risk assessment.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Australia / epidemiology
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Humans
Pandemics
SARS-CoV-2*
Travel