Vaccination and social distancing may be enough to prevent further waves of the Covid-19 epidemic, according to a new study.
- Researchers have developed modeling that shows that vaccination programs and physical distancing may be enough to prevent a new epidemic wave in most cities.
- It would therefore not be necessary to impose a new confinement on the population, or even to restrict the movement of people.
Could vaccination and physical distancing be enough to prevent new waves of Covid-19? This is the opinion of epidemiologists and demographers from the University of Southampton (United Kingdom) and those from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who have just published a study in the journal Nature Human Behavior. According to them, vaccination programs against Covid-19 and respect for the rules of physical distancing could prevent future rebounds in the epidemic. To reach this conclusion, they analyzed several data: those of anonymized mobile phone geolocation, epidemiological data as well as cases of coronavirus in China. Their aim was to model the potential impact of vaccination and social distancing on virus transmission in low, medium and high density cities across the country. The consequences of these two measures depend on the density of the population and the availability of vaccines.
Vaccination alone may be enough to prevent further waves
Vaccination programs and physical distancing will be enough to contain the resurgence of the virus in most cities, researchers say. This result means that it would not be necessary to confine the population again, nor to restrict its mobility. In detail, scientists do not obtain the same results depending on the size and density of cities. Those with medium and high density will need both vaccination and physical distancing to avoid new epidemic peaks of Covid-19. And this, until herd immunity is reached. While in towns with low populations, vaccination alone might suffice. It would therefore not be necessary to impose rules of physical distancing.
A study for decision-makers and health authorities
But, if physical distancing is applied, the authors consider it more effective in the long term – even if the conditions are more flexible – than in the short term with a strong and rigid application. “Our research provides a framework and set of findings that can be used by policy makers and public health authorities to identify levels of intervention to control Covid-19 outbreaks over time, assures Dr Shengjie Lai, co-author of the study and researcher in geography and environmental sciences at the University of Southampton. Although our study is based on data from China, our methods and results are applicable to cities around the world with similar levels of population density and social contact patterns.”
Reducing mobility does not necessarily reduce social contacts
“Previous studies have assumed that when people reduce their mobility, they proportionally reduce their social contacts, but this is not necessarily the case and as more and more SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are put on the market market, there is an urgent need to understand the relationship between these factors, so that we can adjust and adapt interventions”, adds Professor Andy Tatem, another author of the study. Nevertheless, the study contains some limitations, underlined by the researchers themselves. These lack, for example, data on the contribution of handwashing and face masks.
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