JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; CUHK Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China.
Department of Medical Engineering and Technology, Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, China.
J Theor Biol. 2022 Jun 7;542:111105. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111105. Epub 2022 Mar 21.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, genetic mutations in SARS-CoV-2 emerge, and some of them are found more contagious than the previously identified strains, acting as the major mechanism for many large-scale epidemics. The transmission advantage of mutated variants is widely believed as an innate biological feature that is difficult to be altered by artificial factors. In this study, we explore how non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) may affect transmission advantage. A two-strain compartmental epidemic model is proposed and simulated to investigate the biological mechanism of the relationships among different NPIs, the changes in transmissibility of each strain and transmission advantage. Although the NPIs are effective in flattening the epidemic curve, we demonstrate that NPIs probably lead to a decline in transmission advantage, which is likely to occur if the NPIs become intensive. Our findings uncover the mechanistic relationship between NPIs and transmission advantage dynamically, and highlight the important role of NPIs not only in controlling the intensity of epidemics but also in slowing or even containing the growth of the proportion of variants.
随着 COVID-19 大流行的持续,SARS-CoV-2 不断出现基因变异,其中一些变异株比先前确定的变异株更具传染性,成为许多大规模疫情的主要机制。变异株的传播优势被广泛认为是一种难以被人为因素改变的固有生物学特征。在本研究中,我们探讨了非药物干预(NPI)如何影响传播优势。提出并模拟了一个两株隔室流行模型,以研究不同 NPI 之间的关系、每种毒株传染性变化和传播优势的生物学机制。尽管 NPI 有效减缓了疫情曲线的上升,但我们表明,NPI 可能导致传播优势下降,如果 NPI 变得更加密集,这种下降很可能发生。我们的研究结果动态揭示了 NPI 和传播优势之间的机制关系,并强调了 NPI 的重要作用,不仅在于控制疫情的强度,还在于减缓甚至遏制变异株比例的增长。