Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the post-pandemic period

Stephen M Kissler; Christine Tedijanto; Edward Goldstein; Yonatan H. Grad; Marc Lipsitch

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.04.20031112 doi: medRxiv preprint evidence from SARS, the most closely related coronavirus to SARS-CoV-2. Our findings only generalize to temperate regions, comprising 60% of the world's population (29), and differences between average interpersonal contact rates between countries could further modulate the size and intensity of outbreaks. The transmission dynamics of respiratory illnesses in tropical regions can be much more complex. However, we expect that if post-pandemic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 does take hold in temperate regions, there will also be continued transmission in tropical regions seeded by the seasonal outbreaks to the north and south. With such reseeding, longterm disappearance of any strain becomes less likely (30) , but according to our model the effective reproductive number of SARS-CoV-2 remains below 1 during most of each period when that strain disappears, meaning that reseeding would shorten these disappearances only modestly.