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

Next, we incorporated a third betacoronavirus into the dynamic transmission model to represent SARS-CoV-2. We assumed that the incubation period and infectious period for SARS-CoV-2 were the same as the best-fit values for the other betacoronaviruses (5.0 and 4.9 days, respectively; see Table S7 ), in agreement with other estimates (23) (24) (25) . We allowed the cross immunities, duration of immunity, degree of seasonal variation in transmissibility, and establishment time of sustained transmission to vary. For a representative set of parameter values within these ranges, we measured the annual incidence proxy due to SARS-CoV-2 ( Table 1, Tables S2-3 ) and the annual SARS-CoV-2 outbreak peak size (Tables S4-6) for the five years following the simulated time of establishment. We summarized the post-pandemic SARS-CoV-2 dynamics into the categories of annual outbreaks, biennial outbreaks, sporadic outbreaks, or virtual elimination. Overall, shorter durations of immunity and smaller degrees of cross immunity from the other betacoronaviruses were associated with greater total incidence of . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.