Covasim: An agent-based model of COVID-19 dynamics and interventions

Cliff C. Kerr*, Robyn M. Stuart, Dina Mistry, Romesh G. Abeysuriya, Katherine Rosenfeld, Gregory R. Hart, Rafael C. Núñez, Jamie A. Cohen, Prashanth Selvaraj, Brittany Hagedorn, Lauren George, Michał Jastrzȩbski, Amanda S. Izzo, Greer Fowler, Anna Palmer, Dominic Delport, Nick Scott, Sherrie L. Kelly, Caroline S. Bennette, Bradley G. WagnerStewart T. Chang, Assaf P. Oron, Edward A. Wenger, Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths, Michael Famulare, Daniel J. Klein

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

362 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for models that can project epidemic trends, explore intervention scenarios, and estimate resource needs. Here we describe the methodology of Covasim (COVID-19 Agent-based Simulator), an open-source model developed to help address these questions. Covasim includes country-specific demographic information on age structure and population size; realistic transmission networks in different social layers, including households, schools, workplaces, long-term care facilities, and communities; age-specific disease outcomes; and intrahost viral dynamics, including viral-loadbased transmissibility. Covasim also supports an extensive set of interventions, including non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as physical distancing and protective equipment; pharmaceutical interventions, including vaccination; and testing interventions, such as symptomatic and asymptomatic testing, isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine. These interventions can incorporate the effects of delays, loss-to-follow-up, micro-targeting, and other factors. Implemented in pure Python, Covasim has been designed with equal emphasis on performance, ease of use, and flexibility: Realistic and highly customized scenarios can be run on a standard laptop in under a minute. In collaboration with local health agencies and policymakers, Covasim has already been applied to examine epidemic dynamics and inform policy decisions in more than a dozen countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1009149
JournalPLoS Computational Biology
Volume17
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Kerr et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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