COVID-19 herd immunity strategies: walking an elusive and dangerous tightrope
| Autor: | Pejman Rohani, Tobias S. Brett |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Immunity
Herd medicine.medical_specialty Population Pneumonia Viral Psychological intervention Article Herd immunity law.invention 03 medical and health sciences Betacoronavirus 0302 clinical medicine law Development economics medicine Humans Computer Simulation 030212 general & internal medicine education Pandemics Disease burden 030304 developmental biology 0303 health sciences education.field_of_study SARS-CoV-2 Social distance Public health Age Factors COVID-19 Models Theoretical United Kingdom 3. Good health Intervention (law) Transmission (mechanics) Communicable Disease Control Business Disease Susceptibility Coronavirus Infections |
| Zdroj: | medRxiv article-version (status) pre article-version (number) 1 |
| Popis: | The rapid growth rate of COVID-19 continues to threaten to overwhelm healthcare systems in multiple countries. In response, severely affected countries have had to impose a range of public health strategies achieved via nonpharmaceutical interventions. Broadly, these strategies have fallen into two categories: 1) "mitigation," which aims to achieve herd immunity by allowing the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus to spread through the population while mitigating disease burden, and 2) "suppression," aiming to drastically reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates and halt endogenous transmission in the target population. Using an age-structured transmission model, parameterized to simulate SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the United Kingdom, we assessed the long-term prospects of success using both of these approaches. We simulated a range of different nonpharmaceutical intervention scenarios incorporating social distancing applied to differing age groups. Our modeling confirmed that suppression of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is possible with plausible levels of social distancing over a period of months, consistent with observed trends. Notably, our modeling did not support achieving herd immunity as a practical objective, requiring an unlikely balancing of multiple poorly defined forces. Specifically, we found that 1) social distancing must initially reduce the transmission rate to within a narrow range, 2) to compensate for susceptible depletion, the extent of social distancing must be adaptive over time in a precise yet unfeasible way, and 3) social distancing must be maintained for an extended period to ensure the healthcare system is not overwhelmed. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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