Superspreaders and lockdown timing explain the power law dynamics of COVID-19

Vazquez, A.

Infectious disease outbreaks are expected to grow exponentially in time, when left unchecked Measures such as lockdown and social distancing can drastically alter the growth dynamics of the outbreak. Indeed the 2019-2020 COVID-19 outbreak is characterized by a power law growth. Strikingly however, the power law exponent is different across countries. Here I illustrate the relationship between these two extreme scenarios, exponential and power law growth, based on the impact of superspreaders and lockdown strategies to contain the outbreak. The theory predicts an inverse relationship between the power law exponent and the speed of the lockdown that is validated by the observed COVID-19 data across different countries.