Impact of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant on the population: A mathematical modeling approach

Abstract

Several SARS-CoV-2 variants have emerged around the world and the appearance of other variants depends on many factors. These new variants might have different characteristics that can affect the transmissibility and death rate. The administration of vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started in early December of 2020 and in some countries the vaccines will not soon be widely available. In this article, we study the impact of a new more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 strain on prevalence, hospitalizations, and deaths related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We study different scenarios regarding the transmissibility in order to provide a scientific support for public health policies and bring awareness of potential future situations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We construct a compartmental mathematical model based on differential equations to study these different scenarios. In this way, we are able to understand how a new, more infectious strain of the virus can impact the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study several metrics related to the possible outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to assess the impact of a higher transmissibility of a new SARS-CoV-2 strain on these metrics. We found that, even if the new variant has the same death rate, its high transmissibility can increase the number of infected people, those hospitalized, and deaths. The simulation results show that health institutions need to focus on increasing non-pharmaceutical interventions and the pace of vaccine inoculation since a new variant with higher transmissibility as, for example, VOC-202012/01 of lineage B.1.1.7, may cause more devastating outcomes in the population.

Modeling the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants with Gaussian convolution COVID-19: Could the wrong strategy ruin vaccine efficiency?

“…Method 1 -Computation of the optimal strategy using the adjoint state. We start with n and η given by (9). We compute the adjoint state and we derive Λ n and Λ η .…”

“…The authors also mention there could be a risk of emergence of vaccine-resistant mutations, although their model does not take this into account. We refer to [9] for a more thorough review of the literature on the subject and to [20] for a thorough review on NPI.…”

Analysis of Delayed Vaccination Regimens: A Mathematical Modeling Approach

“…Forecasting the long-term dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in a population is an extremely complex problem due to the great number of variables involved, including the non-pharmaceutical interventions affecting social contacts [24][25][26][27]. Forecasting the COVID-19 pandemic for a long period, including factors such as planned vaccine rollout and the appearance of new SARS-CoV-2 variants with different transmissibilities, is very challenging, as time has shown [20,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. For other epidemics due to viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, forecasting is less complex, since, even though social contacts are a factor, social behavior has not changed as much as it has during the COVID-19 pandemic [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51].…”

Dynamic of a Two-strain COVID-19 Model with Vaccination

“…The history of mathematical epidemiologic models date as far back as Bernouilli [16,17,18]. Mathematical models of a two-strain disease are numerous in the literature [19]: malaria [20], influenza [21,22], SARS-CoV-2 [23], dengue [24], disease with age structure and super-infection [25], influenza with a single vaccination [26,29] to cite but a few and the references therein.…”

“…With COVID-19 specificity, we included infections from vaccinated individuals against strain 1, as well as strain 2, since vaccination against strain 1 may not procure any protection against the second and more virulent strain 2. Because variant strains have the potential to substantially alter transmission dynamics and vaccine efficacy, Gonzalez-Parra et al, [23] investigated the impact of more infectious strain of the transmission dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they did not consider vaccination. They concluded that a new variant with higher transmissibility may cause more devastating outcomes in the population.…”