1. Types of COVID-19 clusters and their relationship with social distancing in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea.
- Author
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Choi YJ, Park MJ, Park SJ, Hong D, Lee S, Lee KS, Moon S, Cho J, Jang Y, Lee D, Shin A, Hong YC, and Lee JK
- Subjects
- COVID-19 prevention & control, Contact Tracing, Humans, Seoul epidemiology, COVID-19 epidemiology, Disease Outbreaks, Physical Distancing
- Abstract
Background: The complete contact tracing of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) cases in South Korea allows a unique opportunity to investigate cluster characteristics. This study aimed to investigate all reported COVID-19 clusters in the Seoul metropolitan area from January 23 to September 24, 2020., Methods: Publicly available COVID-19 data was collected from the Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi Province. Community clusters with ≥5 cases were characterized by size and duration, categorized using K-means clustering, and the correlation between the types of clusters and the level of social distancing investigated., Results: A total of 134 clusters comprised of 4033 cases were identified. The clusters were categorized into small (type I and II), medium (type III), and large (type IV) clusters. A comparable number of daily reported cases in different time periods were composed of different types of clusters. Increased social distancing was related to a shift from large to small-sized clusters., Conclusions: Classification of clusters may provide opportunities to understand the pattern of COVID-19 outbreaks better and implement more effective suppression strategies. Social distancing administered by the government may effectively suppress large clusters but may not effectively control small and sporadic clusters., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)
- Published
- 2021
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