EFFECTS OF VACCINATION ON THE TRANSMISSION DYNAMICS OF COVID-19 IN DOUGHERTY COUNTY OF GEORGIA, USA

Abstract

Despite the significant progress in the development of vaccines, the COVID-19 pandemic still poses difficulty for its control because of many obstacles such as the proper implementation of vaccination, public hesitancy towards vaccines, dropping out from the second dose, and varying level of protection after the first and the second doses. In this study, we develop a novel mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission, including two separate vaccinated compartments (first dose and both doses). We parametrize and validate our model using data from Dougherty county of Georgia, USA, one of the most affected counties, where the transmission trend clearly is associated with various policies and public events. We analyze our model for stability of equilibria and persistence of the disease, and formulate expression for reproduction numbers. We estimate that the basic reproduction number in Dougherty county is 1.69, and the effective reproduction number during the study period ranges from 0.26 to 6.36. The number of daily undiagnosed cases peaked at 310 per day, resulting in the maximum number of active infectious individuals to be 2471. Our model predicts that in a high transmission scenario, the vaccination strategies should be combined with other non-pharmaceutical prevention strategies to ensure transmission control. Moreover, our results emphasize that completing both doses of vaccines on time is critical to achieve maximum benefits from the vaccination programs.