The Gompertz Growth of COVID-19 Outbreaks is Caused by Super-Spreaders.

ABSTRACT: In individual SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, the count of confirmed cases and deaths follow a Gompertz growth function for locations of very different sizes. This lack of dependence on region size leads us to hypothesize that virus spread depends on universal properties of the network of social interactions. We test this hypothesis by simulating the propagation of a virus on networks of different topologies. Our main finding is that Gompertz growth observed for early outbreaks occurs only for a scale-free network, in which nodes with many more neighbors than average are common. These nodes that have very many neighbors are infected early in the outbreak and then spread the infection very rapidly. When these nodes are no longer infectious, the remaining nodes that have most neighbors take over and c

SUBMITTER: Zonta F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8722603 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature