COVID-19 PANDEMICS: HOW FAR ARE WE FROM HERD IMMUNITY?

  1. Carlos Hernandez-Suarez
  2. Efren Murillo-Zamora
  3. Francisco Espinoza Gómez

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Abstract

Objectives

to estimate the current number of total infections in a region in order to measure the progress of the epidemic with the purpose of reopening activities and planning the deployment of vaccines.

Study design

We recovered estimates of the basic reproductive number (R 0 ) and the Infection Fatality Risk (IFR) as well as the number of confirmed cases and deaths in several countries.

Methods

this works presents an expression to estimate the number of remaining susceptible in a population using the observed number of SARS-CoV-2 related deaths and current estimates of R 0 and IFR.

Results

the epidemic will infect most of the population causing 2.5 deaths per thousand inhabitants on average, and herd immunity will be achieved when the number of deaths per thousand inhabitants is close to two. This work introduces an expression to provide estimates of the number of remaining susceptible in a region using the reported number of deaths.

Conclusions

any region with fewer than 2.5 deaths per thousand individuals will continue accumulating deaths until this average is achieved, and the infection rate will exceed the removal rate until the number of deaths is about two deaths per thousand, when herd immunity is reached. Waves may occur in any region where the number of deaths is below the herd immunity level.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.19.20248571: (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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.19.20248571v1 on medRxiv