TY - JOUR
T1 - Herd immunity under individual variation and reinfection
AU - Montalbán, Antonio
AU - Corder, Rodrigo M.
AU - Gomes, M. Gabriela M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Paul McKeigue and Joel Miller for valuable discussions and two anonymous reviewers for constructive criticisms and suggestions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/6/30
Y1 - 2022/6/30
N2 - We study a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model considered by Aguas et al. (In: Herd immunity thresholds for SARS-CoV-2 estimated from unfolding epidemics, 2021), Gomes et al. (In: J Theor Biol. 540:111063, 2022) where individuals are assumed to differ in their susceptibility or exposure to infection. Under this heterogeneity assumption, epidemic growth is effectively suppressed when the percentage of the population having acquired immunity surpasses a critical level - the herd immunity threshold - that is lower than in homogeneous populations. We derive explicit formulas to calculate herd immunity thresholds and stable configurations, especially when susceptibility or exposure are gamma distributed, and explore extensions of the model.
AB - We study a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model considered by Aguas et al. (In: Herd immunity thresholds for SARS-CoV-2 estimated from unfolding epidemics, 2021), Gomes et al. (In: J Theor Biol. 540:111063, 2022) where individuals are assumed to differ in their susceptibility or exposure to infection. Under this heterogeneity assumption, epidemic growth is effectively suppressed when the percentage of the population having acquired immunity surpasses a critical level - the herd immunity threshold - that is lower than in homogeneous populations. We derive explicit formulas to calculate herd immunity thresholds and stable configurations, especially when susceptibility or exposure are gamma distributed, and explore extensions of the model.
KW - Effective reproduction number
KW - Herd immunity threshold
KW - Individual variation
KW - SEIR model
KW - Selection
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133133357&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00285-022-01771-x
DO - 10.1007/s00285-022-01771-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 35773525
AN - SCOPUS:85133133357
SN - 0303-6812
VL - 85
JO - Journal Of Mathematical Biology
JF - Journal Of Mathematical Biology
IS - 1
M1 - 2
ER -