Analysis Pandemic Game 2025

The INPUT research group at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine conducted a pandemic simulation at the University of Bern's Night of Research 2025. An ongoing Infection was represented by handing out stickers. Infected individuals could then register at our booth, the "Pandemic Control Center". Using a dice, the infection potential of the visitor was determined and they received the corresponding number of stickers to then go on and infect other people. Visitors to our stand were also able to follow the collected data, such as the age and gender of infected persons and the time of registration, in real time in several graphs.

Number of infected persons

Between 4:00 p.m. and 11:15 p.m., a total of 193 persons registered at the Pandemic Control Center. Together, they received 458 stickers, an average of 2.37 per person. The proportion of registered cases to the number of possible cases was 42.14%.

After about an hour, the number of registered cases increased sharply. This first wave lasted until around 8:00 p.m. This was followed by a second, slightly smaller wave and a more moderate increase in cases shortly before the end of the research night at 11:00 p.m.

The following graph compares the cumulative number of registered cases with the cumulative number of possible cases (number of stickers issued).

Transmission network

All registered cases are linked together within a transmission tree. After the simulated pandemic was started by patient zero, there were up to 17 further generations of cases.

Serial Interval

The serial interval, the time between the registration of two consecutive links in a chain of infection, was less than 15 minutes in almost 70% of all confirmed cases, but more than three hours in four people. They may have been deterred by the queue at the pandemic control center and returned later. This results in an average serial interval of 8 minutes and 42 seconds. The median serial interval is 27 minutes and 16 seconds.

New cases per infected person

The average number of new cases generated by a person infected before 11:00 p.m. is 1.01.

80 infected persons did not infect anyone else.

Location

Almost 95% of all infected persons were infected in the main building.

Gender

Of the 193 infected individuals, 118 (61.14%) were women and 75 (38.86%) were men.

Age

Around half of all infected individuals were between 30 and 64 years old.

Contacts

The following graphs show the patterns of registered infections by age group and gender. The first figure shows connections in the form of infections between different groups. The graph is read from bottom to top.

The last two graphs show the infection patterns between genders and age groups.

Author contributions

The Pandemic Game was developed by Christian Althaus, Michel Counotte, Kaspar Meili, Maurane Riesen, and Julien Riou for the opening of the University of Bern building at Mittelstrasse 43 in 2018. Christian Althaus, Martina Reichmuth, Selina Wegmüller, and Martin Wohlfender ran the game at the University of Bern's Research Night on September 6, 2025.