Assessing the feasibility of sustaining SARS-CoV-2 local containment in China in the era of highly transmissible variants.
BMC Med
; 20(1): 442, 2022 11 15.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2115840
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
The SARS-CoV-2 containment strategy has been successful in mainland China prior to the emergence of Omicron. However, in the era of highly transmissible variants, whether it is possible for China to sustain a local containment policy and under what conditions China could transition away from it are of paramount importance at the current stage of the pandemic.METHODS:
We developed a spatially structured, fully stochastic, individual-based SARS-CoV-2 transmission model to evaluate the feasibility of sustaining SARS-CoV-2 local containment in mainland China considering the Omicron variants, China's current immunization level, and nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). We also built a statistical model to estimate the overall disease burden under various hypothetical mitigation scenarios.RESULTS:
We found that due to high transmissibility, neither Omicron BA.1 nor BA.2 could be contained by China's pre-Omicron NPI strategies which were successful prior to the emergence of the Omicron variants. However, increased intervention intensity, such as enhanced population mobility restrictions and multi-round mass testing, could lead to containment success. We estimated that an acute Omicron epidemic wave in mainland China would result in significant number of deaths if China were to reopen under current vaccine coverage with no antiviral uptake, while increasing vaccination coverage and antiviral uptake could substantially reduce the disease burden.CONCLUSIONS:
As China's current vaccination has yet to reach high coverage in older populations, NPIs remain essential tools to maintain low levels of infection while building up protective population immunity, ensuring a smooth transition out of the pandemic phase while minimizing the overall disease burden.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
Topics:
Vaccines
/
Variants
Limits:
Aged
/
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
BMC Med
Journal subject:
Medicine
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S12916-022-02640-6
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