Risk assessment of COVID-19 epidemic resurgence in relation to SARS-CoV-2 variants and vaccination passes
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Abstract
The introduction of COVID-19 vaccination passes (VPs) by many countries coincided with the Delta variant fast becoming dominant across Europe. A thorough assessment of their impact on epidemic dynamics is still lacking. Here, we propose the VAP-SIRS model that considers possibly lower restrictions for the VP holders than for the rest of the population, imperfect vaccination effectiveness against infection, rates of (re-)vaccination and waning immunity, fraction of never-vaccinated, and the increased transmissibility of the Delta variant. Some predicted epidemic scenarios for realistic parameter values yield new COVID-19 infection waves within two years, and high daily case numbers in the endemic state, even without introducing VPs and granting more freedom to their holders. Still, suitable adaptive policies can avoid unfavorable outcomes. While VP holders could initially be allowed more freedom, the lack of full vaccine effectiveness and increased transmissibility will require accelerated (re-)vaccination, wide-spread immunity surveillance, and/or minimal long-term common restrictions.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.07.21256847: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:VAP-SIRS deliberately keeps several aspects simple (see Methods for model limitations). The advantage of our analysis is the relevance for long-term dynamics, and the focus on avoiding epidemic resurgence. Avoiding another wave is a prudent goal due to threats it poses, in the form of long-term health effects, the deleterious impact on societies and the emergence of new variants. Our model gives valuable insights into policies pertaining to the …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.07.21256847: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:VAP-SIRS deliberately keeps several aspects simple (see Methods for model limitations). The advantage of our analysis is the relevance for long-term dynamics, and the focus on avoiding epidemic resurgence. Avoiding another wave is a prudent goal due to threats it poses, in the form of long-term health effects, the deleterious impact on societies and the emergence of new variants. Our model gives valuable insights into policies pertaining to the introduction of VPs. Model analyses suggest that considerably lowering restrictions for VP holders is only possible when keeping high restrictions on the rest of the population. This situation seems tolerable for the unvaccinated only given high vaccine availability and vaccination speed. The alternative cautious option, i.e. not granting freedoms for VP holders, defeats the purpose of the instrument. Once a large part of the population has been vaccinated, policymakers need to find a new, common restriction level, which could also be achieved through temporary VPs. Our model implies that such common restrictions need to be higher than those initially granted to VP holders, and need to be introduced in time to avoid another wave. As expected, the model shows that there is a larger selection of admissible restrictions’ setups under high vaccine effectiveness, slowly waning immunity, proportional social mixing, low share of never-vaccinated and higher vaccination rate. At least the latter two parameters are amenable to policy action. Thu...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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