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Modeling vaccination rollouts, SARS-CoV-2 variants and the requirement for non-pharmaceutical interventions in Italy

2021; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 27; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/s41591-021-01334-5

1546-170X

Giulia Giordano, Marta Colaneri, Alessandro Di Filippo, Franco Blanchini, Paolo Bolzern, Giuseppe De Nicolao, Paolo Sacchi, Patrizio Colaneri, Raffaele Bruno,

Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy

Despite the progress in medical care, combined population-wide interventions (such as physical distancing, testing and contact tracing) are still crucial to manage the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, aggravated by the emergence of new highly transmissible variants. We combine the compartmental SIDARTHE model, predicting the course of COVID-19 infections, with a new data-based model that projects new cases onto casualties and healthcare system costs. Based on the Italian case study, we outline several scenarios: mass vaccination campaigns with different paces, different transmission rates due to new variants, and different enforced countermeasures, including the alternation of opening and closure phases. Our results demonstrate that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have a higher impact on the epidemic evolution than vaccination, which advocates for the need to keep containment measures in place throughout the vaccination campaign. We also show that, if intermittent open-close strategies are adopted, deaths and healthcare system costs can be drastically reduced, without any aggravation of socioeconomic losses, as long as one has the foresight to start with a closing phase rather than an opening one.