Mathematical appraisal of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron epidemic outbreak in unprecedented Shanghai lockdown

Minghao Jiang; Hongxin Yin; Shiyan Zhang; Guoyu Meng; Geng Wu

doi:10.3389/fmed.2022.1021560

Mathematical appraisal of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron epidemic outbreak in unprecedented Shanghai lockdown

Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Nov 8:9:1021560. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.1021560. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Minghao Jiang¹, Hongxin Yin¹, Shiyan Zhang¹, Guoyu Meng¹, Geng Wu²

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Institute of Hematology, State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, National Research Center for Translational Medicine, Rui-Jin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, The Joint International Research Laboratory of Metabolic and Developmental Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron outbreak is ongoing in Shanghai, home to 25 million population. Here, we presented a novel mathematical model to evaluate the Omicron spread and Zero-COVID strategy. Our model provided important parameters, the average quarantine ratio, the detection interval from being infected to being tested positive, and the spreading coefficient to understand the epidemic progression better. Moreover, we found that the key to a relatively accurate long-term forecast was to take the variation/relaxation of the parameters into consideration based on the flexible execution of the quarantine policy. This allowed us to propose the criteria for estimating the parameters and outcome for the ending stage that is likely to take place in late May. Altogether, this model helped to give a correct mathematical appraisal of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron outbreak under the strict Zero-COVID policy in China.

Keywords: Omicron variant; SARS-CoV-2; Shanghai lockdown; Zero-COVID; quarantine ratio; time-delayed differentiation equation model.