Kojaku et al., "The effectiveness of backward contact tracing in networks" (2021)

Sadamori Kojaku, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Enys Mones, Sune Lehmann, and Yong-Yeol Ahn, Nature Physics 17(5), 652–658 (2021)
Link | arXiv | PDF | Code

@article{kojaku2021effectiveness,
    author = {Sadamori Kojaku and Laurent Hébert-Dufresne and Enys Mones and Sune Lehmann and Yong-Yeol Ahn},
    title = {The effectiveness of backward contact tracing in networks},
    journal = {Nature Physics},
    volume = {17},
    number = {5},
    pages = {652--658},
    doi = {10.1038/s41567-021-01187-2},
    archivePrefix = {arXiv},
    eprint = {2005.02362},
    primaryClass = {q-bio.PE},
    year = {2021},
}

Shows that backward contact tracing can exploit heterogeneity in contact networks to identify superspreading events more effectively than forward tracing. Simulations on synthetic and empirical contact networks find that combining case isolation with limited tracing can prevent more onward transmission per isolation.

Contact tracing, Friendship paradox, Waiting time paradox

Later work examines parameter sensitivity (Juul2022comparing) and empirical performance (Raymenants2022empirical).