{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/preventing-sars-cov-2-superspreading-events","title":"Preventing SARS-CoV-2 superspreading events with antiviral intranasal sprays","arxiv_id":"2505.08053","date":"2025-05-12","proceeding":null,"authors":["George Booth","Christoforos Hadjichrysanthou","Keira L Rice","Jacopo Frallicciardi","Zoltán Magyarics","Frank de Wolf","Jaap Goudsmit","Anna L Beukenhorst","Roy Anderson"],"abstract":"Superspreading events are known to disproportionally contribute to onwards transmission of epidemic and pandemic viruses. Preventing infections at a small number of high-transmission settings is therefore an attractive public health goal. Here, we use deterministic and stochastic mathematical modelling to quantify the impact of intranasal sprays in containing outbreaks at a known superspreading event (the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak at the Diamond Princess cruise ship) and a conference event that led to extensive transmission. We find that in the Diamond Princess cruise ship case study, there exists a 7-14-day window of opportunity for widespread prophylactic spray usage to significantly impact the number of infections averted. Given an immediate response to a known SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, alongside testing and social distancing measures, prophylactic efficacy and coverage greater than 65% could reduce the average number of infections by over 90%. In the conference case study, in the absence of additional public health interventions, analyses suggest much higher prophylactic efficacies and coverages are required to achieve a similar outcome. However, prophylactic use can half an individual's probability of being infected, and significantly reduce the probability of developing a severe infection. These results suggest that at a known potential superspreading event, early use of intranasal sprays can complement quarantining measures and significantly suppress a SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, even at suboptimal coverage. At a potential superspreading event of short duration, intranasal sprays can reduce individuals' risk of infection, but cannot prevent all infections or onwards community transmission.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08053v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.08053v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"preventing-sars-cov-2-superspreading-events","repo_url":"https://github.com/gjibooth/closedpopulations","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}