Estimates of Presumed Population Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 by State in the United States, August 2021
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Abstract
Background
Information is needed to monitor progress toward a level of population immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sufficient to disrupt viral transmission. We estimated the percentage of the US population with presumed immunity to SARS-CoV-2 due to vaccination, natural infection, or both as of August 26, 2021.
Methods
Publicly available data as of August 26, 2021, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used to calculate presumed population immunity by state. Seroprevalence data were used to estimate the percentage of the population previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, with adjustments for underreporting. Vaccination coverage data for both fully and partially vaccinated persons were used to calculate presumed immunity from vaccination. Finally, we estimated the percentage of the total population in each state with presumed immunity to SARS-CoV-2, with a sensitivity analysis to account for waning immunity, and compared these estimates with a range of population immunity thresholds.
Results
In our main analysis, which was the most optimistic scenario, presumed population immunity varied among states (43.1% to 70.6%), with 19 states with ≤60% of their population having been infected or vaccinated. Four states had presumed immunity greater than thresholds estimated to be sufficient to disrupt transmission of less infectious variants (67%), and none were greater than the threshold estimated for more infectious variants (≥78%).
Conclusions
The United States remains a distance below the threshold sufficient to disrupt viral transmission, with some states remarkably low. As more infectious variants emerge, it is critical that vaccination efforts intensify across all states and ages for which the vaccines are approved.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.17.21263759: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:There were several limitations to our approach. First, we used data from CDC’s Nationwide Commercial Laboratory Seroprevalence Surveys because they provide nucleocapsid seroprevalence estimates for each state. As these surveys use blood samples submitted for reasons unrelated to COVID-19 (e.g., routine clinical visits), they might not be …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.17.21263759: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:There were several limitations to our approach. First, we used data from CDC’s Nationwide Commercial Laboratory Seroprevalence Surveys because they provide nucleocapsid seroprevalence estimates for each state. As these surveys use blood samples submitted for reasons unrelated to COVID-19 (e.g., routine clinical visits), they might not be representative of the broader U.S. population. Specifically, people who have blood samples taken during routine medical care or sick visits sought health care and had a blood test and, therefore, may differ in their overall health and disease exposure risk from the general US population.[16] If these individuals are more likely to have other conditions or exposures that also put them at increased risk for COVID-19, this could result in a higher seroprevalence estimate from the survey population being applied to the general US population in our analysis. Second, although we conducted a sensitivity analysis to explore the potential impact of waning immunity, we were unable to more precisely account for waning immunity after infection or vaccination due to a lack of data on date of infection and limited information about duration of natural immunity. Emerging data suggest that immunity due to infection and vaccination may wane over time and may depend on factors including individual characteristics and the SARS-CoV-2 variant. Although this could result in an overestimate of immunity in our calculations (both primary and sensitivity analyses), ou...
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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