Shah Monica S, Lee Jiyoung, Pomeroy Laura W
Environmental Sciences Graduate Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
Division of Environmental Health Sciences, College of Public Health, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Jul 16;20(7):e0327817. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0327817. eCollection 2025.
Identifying temporal patterns in dynamics of acute, immunizing infectious diseases informs our understanding of transmission, epidemic prediction, and disease control. However, for emerging pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, temporal dynamics remain underinformed, even though COVID-19 cases varied greatly over time. Using nested compartmental models, we quantified transmission and immune dynamics in part of Columbus, the capital city of the state of Ohio, United States (US). We parameterized models using state-reported COVID-19 case counts and wastewater-based surveillance (WWS) for SARS-CoV-2. We used the models to reconstruct transmission and the rate of waning immunity in three distinct pandemic phases from April 2020 to August 2022. On average, transmission rates were lowest for the ancestral strain and highest for the Omicron variant. Transmission did not display consistent seasonal changes but did vary through time in ways that might have been influenced by host behavior or viral strain switching. Our findings also indicate that vaccine-induced and infection-induced SARS-CoV-2 immunity wane at similar rates. Gaining a better understanding of population-level transmission and immune dynamics following the emergence of a novel pathogen can inform future public health interventions including vaccine schedules.
识别急性免疫传染病动态中的时间模式有助于我们理解疾病传播、疫情预测和疾病控制。然而，对于像严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）这样的新兴病原体，尽管2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）病例随时间变化很大，但时间动态仍了解不足。我们使用嵌套分区模型，对美国俄亥俄州首府哥伦布市部分地区的传播和免疫动态进行了量化。我们使用该州报告的COVID-19病例数和基于废水的监测（WWS）对SARS-CoV-2进行模型参数化。我们使用这些模型重建了2020年4月至2022年8月三个不同大流行阶段的传播情况和免疫衰退率。平均而言，原始毒株的传播率最低，奥密克戎变种的传播率最高。传播没有呈现出一致的季节性变化，但确实随时间变化，其方式可能受到宿主行为或病毒株转换的影响。我们的研究结果还表明，疫苗诱导和感染诱导的SARS-CoV-2免疫力以相似的速度衰退。更好地了解新型病原体出现后的人群水平传播和免疫动态，可以为包括疫苗接种计划在内的未来公共卫生干预措施提供信息。
