Estimating SARS-CoV-2 variant strain infectiousness in Japan as of March 28, 2021
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Abstract
Background
A variant strain of SARS-CoV-2, VOC202012/01, emerged in the UK in September, 2020. Its infectiousness was estimated as higher than that of the original strain.
Object
We estimated the infectiousness of the variant strain of SARS-CoV-2 in comparison to that of the original strain under conditions prevailing in Japan.
Methods
We estimated infectiousness through a simple susceptible–infected–recovered (SIR) model by strain. The study period was March 1–28, 2020. The information used for the study was available as of April 3, 2020.
Results
The estimated reproduction number of the SARS-CoV-2 variant strain was 1.799; its 95% CI was [1.642, 1.938]. The onset date of the first case in Japan was estimated as December 4 ([November 16, December 14]), 2020. However, infectiousness of the original strain was estimated as 1.123 ([1.093, 1.166]).
Discussion and Conclusion
We demonstrated that infectiousness increased by 0.684 or 60%, increasing from the original to the variant. That finding might be comparable to that of a study conducted in the UK. However, the difference must be monitored continuously and carefully.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.11.21255283: (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:The present study has some limitations. First, because of data limitations, some differences among variant strains were not considered. However, examination of those differences might be important for predicting which subtype of variant strain is dominant in the outbreak. Secondly, the obtained result reflects information up to March, …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.11.21255283: (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:The present study has some limitations. First, because of data limitations, some differences among variant strains were not considered. However, examination of those differences might be important for predicting which subtype of variant strain is dominant in the outbreak. Secondly, the obtained result reflects information up to March, 2021. Changes in climate or mobility might have affected the results. In addition, as described above, increasing vaccine coverage might eventually affect results. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor differences of infectiousness among strains carefully and continuously.
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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