Modelling the impact of COVID-19 and routine MenACWY vaccination on meningococcal carriage and disease in the UK.

Country-wide social distancing and suspension of non-emergency medical care due to the COVID-19 pandemic will undoubtedly have affected public health in multiple ways. While non-pharmaceutical interventions are expected to reduce the transmission of several infectious diseases, severe disruptions to healthcare systems have hampered diagnosis, treatment, and routine vaccination. We examined the effect of this disruption on meningococcal disease and vaccination in the UK. By adapting an existing mathematical model for meningococcal carriage, we addressed the following questions: What is the predicted impact of the existing MenACWY adolescent vaccination programme? What effect might social distancing and reduced vaccine uptake both have on future epidemiology? Will catch-up vaccination campaigns be necessary? Our model indicated that the MenACWY vaccine programme was generating substantial indirect protection and suppressing transmission by 2020. COVID-19 social distancing is expected to have accelerated this decline, causing significant long-lasting reductions in both carriage prevalence of meningococcal A/C/W/Y strains and incidence of invasive meningococcal disease. In all scenarios modelled, pandemic social mixing effects outweighed potential reductions in vaccine uptake, causing an overall decline in carriage prevalence from 2020 for at least 5 years. Model outputs show strong consistency with recently published case data for England.

Modelling: Understanding pandemics and how to control them.

New disease challenges, societal demands and better or novel types of data, drive innovations in the structure, formulation and analysis of epidemic models. Innovations in modelling can lead to new insights into epidemic processes and better use of available data, yielding improved disease control and stimulating collection of better data and new data types. Here we identify key challenges for the structure, formulation, analysis and use of mathematical models of pathogen transmission relevant to current and future pandemics.

Challenges on the interaction of models and policy for pandemic control.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen infectious disease modelling at the forefront of government decision-making. Models have been widely used throughout the pandemic to estimate pathogen spread and explore the potential impact of different intervention strategies. Infectious disease modellers and policymakers have worked effectively together, but there are many avenues for progress on this interface. In this paper, we identify and discuss seven broad challenges on the interaction of models and policy for pandemic control. We then conclude with suggestions and recommendations for the future.