Journal article
Possible future waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection generated by variants of concern with a range of characteristics
- Abstract:
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Viral reproduction of SARS-CoV-2 provides opportunities for the acquisition of advantageous mutations, altering viral transmissibility, disease severity, and/or allowing escape from natural or vaccine-derived immunity. We use three mathematical models: a parsimonious deterministic model with homogeneous mixing; an age-structured model; and a stochastic importation model to investigate the effect of potential variants of concern (VOCs). Calibrating to the situation in England in May 2021, we find epidemiological trajectories for putative VOCs are wide-ranging and dependent on their transmissibility, immune escape capability, and the introduction timing of a postulated VOC-targeted vaccine. We demonstrate that a VOC with a substantial transmission advantage over resident variants, or with immune escape properties, can generate a wave of infections and hospitalisations comparable to the winter 2020-2021 wave. Moreover, a variant that is less transmissible, but shows partial immune-escape could provoke a wave of infection that would not be revealed until control measures are further relaxed.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-021-25915-7
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 5730
- Publication date:
- 2021-09-30
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-09-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Pmid:
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34593807
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1198461
- Local pid:
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pubs:1198461
- Deposit date:
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2023-02-08
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Dyson et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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