Effectiveness of potential antiviral treatments in COVID-19 transmission control: a modelling study.
Infect Dis Poverty
; 10(1): 53, 2021 Apr 19.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1191906
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) causes an immense disease burden. Although public health countermeasures effectively controlled the epidemic in China, non-pharmaceutical interventions can neither be maintained indefinitely nor conveniently implemented globally. Vaccination is mainly used to prevent COVID-19, and most current antiviral treatment evaluations focus on clinical efficacy. Therefore, we conducted population-based simulations to assess antiviral treatment effectiveness among different age groups based on its clinical efficacy.METHODS:
We collected COVID-19 data of Wuhan City from published literature and established a database (from 2 December 2019 to 16 March 2020). We developed an age-specific model to evaluate the effectiveness of antiviral treatment in patients with COVID-19. Efficacy was divided into three types (1) viral activity reduction, reflected as transmission rate decrease [reduction was set as v (0-0.8) to simulate hypothetical antiviral treatments]; (2) reduction in the duration time from symptom onset to patient recovery/removal, reflected as a 1/γ decrease (reduction was set as 1-3 days to simulate hypothetical or real-life antiviral treatments, and the time of asymptomatic was reduced by the same proportion); (3) fatality rate reduction in severely ill patients (fc) [reduction (z) was set as 0.3 to simulate real-life antiviral treatments]. The population was divided into four age groups (groups 1, 2, 3 and 4), which included those aged ≤ 14; 15-44; 45-64; and ≥ 65 years, respectively. Evaluation indices were based on outbreak duration, cumulative number of cases, total attack rate (TAR), peak date, number of peak cases, and case fatality rate (f).RESULTS:
Comparing the simulation results of combination and single medication therapy s, all four age groups showed better results with combination medication. When 1/γ = 2 and v = 0.4, age group 2 had the highest TAR reduction rate (98.48%, 56.01-0.85%). When 1/γ = 2, z = 0.3, and v = 0.1, age group 1 had the highest reduction rate of f (83.08%, 0.71-0.12%).CONCLUSIONS:
Antiviral treatments are more effective in COVID-19 transmission control than in mortality reduction. Overall, antiviral treatments were more effective in younger age groups, while older age groups showed higher COVID-19 prevalence and mortality. Therefore, physicians should pay more attention to prevention of viral spread and patients deaths when providing antiviral treatments to patients of older age groups.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Antiviral Agents
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Vaccines
/
Variants
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Aged
/
Humans
/
Middle aged
/
Young adult
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
Infect Dis Poverty
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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