Modelling long-term COVID-19 hospital admission dynamics using empirical immune protection waning data

Abstract

Immune waning is key to the timely anticipation of COVID-19 long-term dynamics. We assess the impact of periodic vaccination campaigns using a compartmental epidemiological model with multiple age structures and parameterised using empiric time-dependent vaccine protection data. Despite the inherent uncertainty, we show that vaccination on its own, especially if restricted to individuals over 60 years old, seems insufficient to prevent a large number of hospital admissions.

SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, kinetics, and evolution: a narrative review

“…Modelling studies calibrated with the immune waning estimated from cohort studies showed that, even in the absence of new variants, yearly waves were unavoidable and that measures to reduce virus transmission (e.g. through improvement in indoor air quality) could have an eect similar to vaccination campaigns targetting the whole population [145].…”

“…However, in the short term, if the goal is to anticipate the occupancy of intensive care unit beds, this assumption generates unacceptable inaccuracies, especially at the peaks [181]. Several solutions were implemented in the COVID epidemics such as chaining compartments [182], using partial dierential equations [145], or adopting a discrete-time formalism [181]. This importance of memory eects was already present in one of the seminal epidemiology articles [93], which is often only cited for the SIR model, and it is insightful to see how new extensions build on these century-old foundations [183].…”