Abstract
Based on hospital capacities, facts from past experience with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus and the number of dark infections during the second wave (DII=2D2), a reasonable limiting value of 140/D2 for the 7-day incidence per 100,000 persons (MSDIHT) and a second wave herd immunization threshold fraction value of 0.26 in Germany were calculated. If the MSDIHT is held below this limiting value, the German hospital system can cope with the number of new seriously infected persons without any triage decisions. On the basis of the SIRV epidemics model, the classical threshold values for herd immunization were calculated for 18 countries. For these countries, the dates regarding when herd immunization against the second COVID-19 wave will be reached were estimated.
Highlights
In Germany the imposition of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) leading to partial and total lockdowns have been justified by goverment agencies with values of the so-called monitored 7-day incidence per 100, 000 persons—hereafter referred to as MSDIHT—exceeding either 50 or 200, respectively
In Germany this dark number for the first COVID-19 wave has been estimated [3] to be about DI = 8.4 ± 4.0 by modeling simultaneusly the monitored death and infection rates during the first COVID-19 wave
Germany in total has about B = 50, 000 ab = 10, 000 a20 b breathing apparati or intensitive treatment beds, of which, only a = 20 percent a20 = 0.2 a20 are available for the treatment of seriously infected persons (SIPs) with COVID-19
Summary
In Germany the imposition of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) leading to partial and total lockdowns have been justified by goverment agencies with values of the so-called monitored 7-day incidence per 100, 000 persons—hereafter referred to as MSDIHT—exceeding either 50 or 200, respectively. With estimated costs for each lockdown day of about 444 million euros [1,2], two issues are of great importance: (1) the calculation of a reasonable MSDIHT value based on the medical capacity of Germany, and (2) reliable calculations of the percentages of infected and vaccinated persons in Germany for herd immunization, which would remove the justification for any lockdown measures. The calculation of the herd immunization percentage requires the careful determination of the so-called basic reproduction number of the COVID-19 pandemic. We address this in the second part of this note (Section 3.2). We emphasize that throughout our investigation we used medical parameter values averaged over a large population size which do not represent regional fluctuations
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