Looking back on forward-looking COVID models

Chong, Paul; Yoon, Byung-Jun; Lai, Debbie; Carlson, Michael; Lee, Jarone; He, Shuhan

doi:10.1016/j.patter.2022.100492

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

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“…We intentionally concentrated on articles which were calibrated on data for an at least partially vaccinated population, as subsequent studies found that early COVID-19 pandemic prognostic models, when retrospectively analyzed, tended to have serious deficiencies. These deficiencies included overestimating the number of hospitalisations and deaths ( 25 ), as well as underestimating the impact of voluntary behavioral changes if the number of cases increased ( 26 ), or taking mutually exclusive assumptions concerning the reproduction number ( 27 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To vaccinate or to isolate? Establishing which intervention leads to measurable mortality reduction during the COVID-19 Delta wave in Poland

Walkowiak,

Walkowiak

2023

Front. Public Health

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BackgroundDuring the Delta variant COVID-19 wave in Poland there were serious regional differences in vaccination rates and discrepancies in the enforcement of pandemic preventive measures, which allowed us to assess the relative effectiveness of the policies implemented.MethodsCreating a model that would predict mortality based on vaccination rates among the most vulnerable groups and the timing of the wave peak enabled us to calculate to what extent flattening the curve reduced mortality. Subsequently, a model was created to assess which preventive measures delayed the peak of infection waves. Combining those two models allowed us to estimate the relative effectiveness of those measures.ResultsFlattening the infection curve worked: according to our model, each week of postponing the peak of the wave reduced excess deaths by 1.79%. Saving a single life during the Delta wave required one of the following: either the vaccination of 57 high-risk people, or 1,258 low-risk people to build herd immunity, or the isolation of 334 infected individuals for a cumulative period of 10.1 years, or finally quarantining 782 contacts for a cumulative period of 19.3 years.ConclusionsExcept for the most disciplined societies, vaccination of high-risk individuals followed by vaccinating low-risk groups should have been the top priority instead of relying on isolation and quarantine measures which can incur disproportionately higher social costs. Our study demonstrates that even in a country with uniform policies, implementation outcomes varied, highlighting the importance of fine-tuning policies to regional specificity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%