Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2020 Nov 16;6(4):e21168. doi: 10.2196/21168.
The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 disease, has resulted in a global pandemic. Since its emergence in December 2019, the virus has infected millions of people, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and resulted in incalculable social and economic damage. Understanding the infectivity and transmission dynamics of the virus is essential to determine how best to reduce mortality while ensuring minimal social restrictions on the lives of the general population. Anecdotal evidence is available, but detailed studies have not yet revealed whether infection with the virus results in immunity.
The objective of this study was to use mathematical modeling to investigate the reinfection frequency of COVID-19.
We have used the SIR (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) framework and random processing based on empirical SARS-CoV-2 infection and fatality data from different regions to calculate the number of reinfections that would be expected to occur if no immunity to the disease occurred.
Our model predicts that cases of reinfection should have been observed by now if primary SARS-CoV-2 infection did not protect individuals from subsequent exposure in the short term; however, no such cases have been documented.
This work concludes that infection with SARS-CoV-2 provides short-term immunity to reinfection and therefore offers useful insight for serological testing strategies, lockdown easing, and vaccine development.
导致 COVID-19 疾病的新型冠状病毒 SARS-CoV-2 已在全球范围内引发大流行。自 2019 年 12 月出现以来，该病毒已感染数百万人，造成数十万人死亡，并造成不可估量的社会和经济损失。了解病毒的传染性和传播动态对于确定如何在最大限度地减少死亡率的同时，最大限度地减少对普通人群生活的社会限制至关重要。有一些传闻证据，但详细的研究尚未揭示感染该病毒是否会产生免疫力。
本研究旨在使用数学模型来研究 COVID-19 的再感染频率。
我们使用了 SIR（易感、感染、恢复）框架和基于来自不同地区的 SARS-CoV-2 感染和死亡率的经验数据的随机处理来计算如果疾病没有免疫力，预计会发生多少次再感染。
我们的模型预测，如果初次 SARS-CoV-2 感染不能在短期内保护个体免受随后的暴露，那么现在应该已经观察到再感染病例；但是，尚未记录到这种病例。
这项工作得出的结论是，感染 SARS-CoV-2 可提供短期的再感染免疫力，因此为血清学检测策略、放宽封锁和疫苗开发提供了有用的见解。
