Behaviour, booster vaccines and waning immunity: modelling the medium-term dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in England in the Omicron era

  1. Rosanna C. Barnard
  2. Nicholas G. Davies
  3. Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases COVID-19 working group
  4. Mark Jit
  5. W. John Edmunds

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Abstract

England has experienced a heavy burden of COVID-19, with multiple waves of SARS-CoV-2 transmission since early 2020 and high infection levels following the emergence and spread of Omicron variants since late 2021. In response to rising Omicron cases, booster vaccinations were accelerated and offered to all adults in England. Using a model fitted to more than 2 years of epidemiological data, we project potential dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospital admissions and deaths in England to December 2022. We consider key uncertainties including future behavioural change and waning immunity, and assess the effectiveness of booster vaccinations in mitigating SARS-CoV-2 disease burden between October 2021 and December 2022. If no new variants emerge, SARS-CoV-2 transmission is expected to decline, with low levels remaining in the coming months. The extent to which projected SARS-CoV-2 transmission resurges later in 2022 depends largely on assumptions around waning immunity and to some extent, behaviour and seasonality.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.11.22.21266584v2 on medRxiv
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.22.21266584: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The model uses Google Community Mobility data26 to capture mobility in various settings: workplaces, retail & recreation venues, transit stations, and grocery & pharmacy locations.
    Google Community Mobility
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are a number of limitations in this work which are important to consider. The extent to which immunity from natural infection and from vaccination wanes is uncertain. Individuals may retain very long-term protection against severe outcomes, but have faster rates of waning against less severe outcomes such as mild or asymptomatic infection. We model waning vaccine protection in a way that initially allows protection against different outcomes to be reduced to different extents. Individuals can then return to being entirely susceptible from the vaccinated-and-waned state or from the naturally infected and recovered state (see assumed rates of waning in Table S4). We have parameterised waning rates in relation to measured reductions in protection against severe outcomes, but our assumption that individuals return to being completely naive to infection may still be overly pessimistic. We have not attempted to explore the dynamics of waning immunity from natural infection here in detail. Throughout, we assume identical levels of protection are conferred from natural infection and from vaccination across individuals of all ages. It is likely that protection will differ from person to person and that more clinically vulnerable individuals may have lower levels of protection or faster reductions in protection. Further, we do not consider any differences in vaccine coverage by risk group. This work assumes that no new variants of SARS-CoV-2 possessing any kind of transmission ad...

    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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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.11.22.21266584v1 on medRxiv