The impact of COVID-19 vaccination on California’s return to normalcy
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Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 has infected nearly 3.7 million and killed 61,722 Californians, as of May 22, 2021. Non-pharmaceutical interventions have been instrumental in mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. However, as we ease restrictions, widespread implementation of COVID-19 vaccines is essential to prevent its resurgence. In this work, we addressed the adequacy and deficiency of vaccine uptake within California and the possibility and severity of resurgence of COVID-19 as restrictions are lifted given the current vaccination rates. We implemented a real-time Bayesian data assimilation approach to provide projections of incident cases and deaths in California following the reopening of its economy on June 15, 2021. We implemented scenarios that vary vaccine uptake prior to reopening, and transmission rates and effective population sizes following the reopening. For comparison purposes, we adopted a baseline scenario using the current vaccination rates, which projects a total 11,429 cases and 429 deaths in a 15-day period after reopening. We used posterior estimates based on CA historical data to provide realistic model parameters after reopening. When the transmission rate is increased after reopening, we projected an increase in cases by 21.8% and deaths by 4.4% above the baseline after reopening. When the effective population is increased after reopening, we observed an increase in cases by 51.8% and deaths by 12.3% above baseline. A 30% reduction in vaccine uptake alone has the potential to increase cases and deaths by 35% and 21.6%, respectively. Conversely, increasing vaccine uptake by 30% could decrease cases and deaths by 26.1% and 17.9%, respectively. As California unfolds its plan to reopen its economy on June 15, 2021, it is critical that social distancing and public behavior changes continue to be promoted, particularly in communities with low vaccine uptake. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation to ease mask-wearing for fully vaccinated individuals despite major inequities in vaccine uptake in counties across the state highlights some of the logistical challenges that society faces as we enthusiastically phase out of this pandemic.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.01.21258187: (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
Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources Data on weekly moving average of confirmed cases and deaths are used to estimate the contact rate (β), the proportion of the effective population (ω), the fraction of individuals infected that are deceased (g), and the initial conditions for all compartments, except for the susceptible ones which is set as S(t0) = ω · N − (E(t0) + O(t0) + U (t0) + R(t0)) + V1(t0) + V2(t0). E(t0) + O(t0) + U (t0) + R(t0)) + V1(t0) + V2suggested: NoneResults from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.01.21258187: (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
Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources Data on weekly moving average of confirmed cases and deaths are used to estimate the contact rate (β), the proportion of the effective population (ω), the fraction of individuals infected that are deceased (g), and the initial conditions for all compartments, except for the susceptible ones which is set as S(t0) = ω · N − (E(t0) + O(t0) + U (t0) + R(t0)) + V1(t0) + V2(t0). E(t0) + O(t0) + U (t0) + R(t0)) + V1(t0) + V2suggested: NoneResults from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: There are several limitations within our modeling framework that are important to address. Our models do not explicitly capture forms of social influence and individual level behavior which may influence virus spread. Our model assumed homogeneous host mixing which assumes that all participants have identical rates of contacts leading to disease transmission. To mitigate the restrictiveness of this assumption, we included the effective population parameter to our model, which allows for added flexibility in our assumed proportion of individuals susceptible to being infected due to different restrictions, openings, and social behavior. In addition, our model is time dependent allowing the estimated model parameters to vary according to historical data. However, our current model is unable to fully capture the dynamics with specific or localized restrictive measures, or super-spreader events. Another limitation is the absence of age and other risk factors, such as comorbidities, that may impact both infections and hospitalizations. Some of these aspects can be included, as well as more detailed transitions of the dynamics of the virus. However, for practical purposes, our transmission model has made a large number of simplifying assumptions mostly driven by the inability to access data with the appropriate spatio-temporal resolution and coverage. Another limitation in our model is our assumption of the infectivity rate, although currently based on historical data f...
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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