A minimal model for household effects in epidemics

Shelter-in-place and other confinement strategies implemented in the current COVID-19 pandemic have created stratified patterns of contacts between people: close contacts within households and more distant contacts between the households. The epidemic transmission dynamics is significantly modified as a consequence.

We introduce a minimal model that incorporates these household effects in the framework of mean-field theory and numerical simulations. We show that the reproduction number R ₀ depends on the household size in a surprising way: linearly for relatively small households, and as a square root of size for larger households. We discuss the implications of the findings for the lockdown, test, tracing, and isolation policies.