A mathematical model reveals the influence of NPIs and vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant.

ABSTRACT

An SVEIR SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant model is proposed to provide some insights to coordinate non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and vaccination. Mathematically, we define the basic reproduction number R 0 and the effective reproduction number R e to measure the infection potential of Omicron variant and formulate an optimal disease control strategy. Our inversion results imply that the sick period of Omicron variant in the United States is longer than that of Delta variant in India. The decrease in the infectious period of the infection with infectiousness implies that the risk of hospitalization is reduced; but the increasing period of the infection with non-infectiousness signifies that Omicron variant lengthens the period of nucleic acid test being negative. Optimistically, Omicron's death rate is only a quarter of Delta's. Moreover, we forecast that the cumulative cases will exceed 100 million in the United States on February 28, 2022, and the daily confirmed cases will reach a peak on February 2, 2022. The results of parameters sensitivity analysis imply that NPIs are helpful to reduce the number of confirmed cases. In particular, NPIs are indispensable even if all the people were vaccinated when the efficiency of vaccine is relatively low. By simulating the relationships of the effective reproduction number R e , the vaccination rate and the efficacy of vaccine, we find that it is impossible to achieve the herd immunity without NPIs while the efficiency of vaccine is lower than 88.7 % . Therefore, the herd immunity area is defined by the evolution of relationships between the vaccination rate and the efficacy of vaccine. Finally, we present that the disease-induced mortality rate demonstrates the periodic oscillation and an almost periodic function is deduced to match the curve. A discussion completes the paper.