Untangling the changing impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccination on European COVID-19 trajectories

Yong Ge (), Wen-Bin Zhang, Xilin Wu, Corrine W. Ruktanonchai, Haiyan Liu, Jianghao Wang, Yongze Song, Mengxiao Liu, Wei Yan, Juan Yang, Eimear Cleary, Sarchil H. Qader, Fatumah Atuhaire, Nick W. Ruktanonchai, Andrew J. Tatem () and Shengjie Lai ()
Additional contact information
Yong Ge: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wen-Bin Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xilin Wu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Corrine W. Ruktanonchai: Population Health Sciences, Virginia Tech
Haiyan Liu: South Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai)
Jianghao Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yongze Song: Curtin University
Mengxiao Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wei Yan: Peking University Third Hospital
Juan Yang: Fudan University, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Ministry of Education
Eimear Cleary: University of Southampton
Sarchil H. Qader: University of Southampton
Fatumah Atuhaire: University of Southampton
Nick W. Ruktanonchai: Population Health Sciences, Virginia Tech
Andrew J. Tatem: University of Southampton
Shengjie Lai: Fudan University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and vaccination are two fundamental approaches for mitigating the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the real-world impact of NPIs versus vaccination, or a combination of both, on COVID-19 remains uncertain. To address this, we built a Bayesian inference model to assess the changing effect of NPIs and vaccination on reducing COVID-19 transmission, based on a large-scale dataset including epidemiological parameters, virus variants, vaccines, and climate factors in Europe from August 2020 to October 2021. We found that (1) the combined effect of NPIs and vaccination resulted in a 53% (95% confidence interval: 42–62%) reduction in reproduction number by October 2021, whereas NPIs and vaccination reduced the transmission by 35% and 38%, respectively; (2) compared with vaccination, the change of NPI effect was less sensitive to emerging variants; (3) the relative effect of NPIs declined 12% from May 2021 due to a lower stringency and the introduction of vaccination strategies. Our results demonstrate that NPIs were complementary to vaccination in an effort to reduce COVID-19 transmission, and the relaxation of NPIs might depend on vaccination rates, control targets, and vaccine effectiveness concerning extant and emerging variants.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30897-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30897-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30897-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().