Mitigation and herd immunity strategy for COVID-19 is likely to fail

Wolfgang Bock; Barbara Adamik; Marek Bawiec; Viktor Bezborodov; Marcin Bodych; Jan Pablo Burgard; Thomas Goetz; Tyll Krueger; Agata Migalska; Barbara Pabjan; Tomasz Ozanski; Ewaryst Rafajlowicz; Wojciech Rafajlowicz,; Ewa Skubalska-Rafajlowicz; Sara Ryfczynska; Ewa Szczurek; Piotr Szymanski

Under the assumption that the detection rate of infected persons is constant over time, the observed numbers of infected persons are valid for estimating the R* in the population. To find the R* under the present model that fits the observed evolution of cases in Germany and Poland and also for Wroc law and Berlin the following procedure was followed. First a very sparse grid of possible R* was chosen to see the evolution of the stochastic microsimulation over time. As the observed data from 5th March till 20th March were available, the increase from a starting number of infected persons to the final number, as of 20th March, should have occurred within these 16 days. To show the narrowness of the possible parameters an example for this procedure will be made for the federal state of Berlin. In Figure A .6 the box-plots of the duration are plotted for obtaining an increase of 13 (5th March, Berlin) to 848 (20th March , Berlin) in 16 days. Values above the horizontal line at 16 indicate that R* is too low, as it takes too long to take the evolution, and values below 16 state that R* is too high, as it evolves faster than the observed values. However, as we are dealing with a stochastic microsimulation it is clear that the outcome after a given time is not deterministic, but may vary quite a lot. Therefore, the dots indicate the average duration to perform the above said evolution. From this Figure A.6 13 . CC-BY-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.