Parametrization of Worldwide Covid-19 data for multiple variants: How is the SAR-Cov2 virus evolving?

Abstract

We mapped the 2020-2023 daily Covid-19 case data from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the original SIR model of Karmack and McKendrick for multiple pandemic recurrences due to the evolution of the virus to different variants in forty countries worldwide. The aim of the study was to determine how the SIR parameters are changing as the virus evolved into variants. Each peak in cases was analyzed separately for each country and the parameters: reff(pandemic R-parameter), Leff(average number of days an individual is infective) and α (the rate of infection for contacts between the set of susceptible persons and the set of infected persons) were computed. Each peak was mapped to circulating variants for each country and the SIR parameters (reff, Leff, α) were averaged over each variant using their values in peaks where 70% of the variant sequences identified belonged to a single variant. This analysis showed that on average, compared to the original Wuhan variant (α = 0.2), the parameter α has increased to α = 0.5 for the Omicron variants. The value of reffhas decreased from around 3.8 to 2.0 and Leffhas decreased from 15 days to 10 days. This is as would be expected of a virus that is coming to equilibrium by evolving to increase its infectivity while reducing the effects of infections on the host.