Yuan, Z., Zhao, S., Hsu, S. C., & Cheung, C. M. (2023). Uncovering Construction Site–Specific Transmission Patterns of COVID-19: A Spatiotemporal Connectivity Analysis in Hong Kong. Journal of Management in Engineering, 39(1), 04022067.

To adapt to the prolonged pandemic, the construction industry, which hasa high vulnerability to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection, hassought more sector-specific and individual-level nonpharmaceuticalinterventions (NPIs). Understanding infection transmission patterns candetermine what, when, and how NPIs should be implemented. This study examinedinfection transmission proceeding from construction sites usingspatiotemporal analysis with COVID-19 case cluster data from constructionsites in Hong Kong. The study revealed that COVID-19 transmission diffusesfrom the workplace to residential neighborhoods where infected constructionworkers live but not to the surroundings of infected construction sites. Theaverage number of offspring cases infected by each seed case in the first tofifth transmission generations were 7.8, 26.1, 10.6, 3.6, and 1.3,respectively. Around 18% of cases were responsible for 79.6% of all COVID-19transmission, driven mainly by workplace and household settings. The studyfound that closing a workplace within two working days after a primary caseis identified can help reduce the attack rate by 5.33%. Encouraging householdmembers of infected construction workers to follow quarantines can reduceoffspring cases by 15.84% on average. A priori identification ofsuperspreaders can help remove half of COVID-19 cases.