Mitigation and herd immunity strategy for COVID-19 is likely to fail

Abstract

Abstract On the basis of a semi-realistic SIR microsimulation for Germany and Poland, we show that the R 0 parameter interval for which the COVID-19 epidemic stays overcritical but below the capacity limit of the health care system to reach herd immunity is so narrow that a successful implementation of this strategy is likely to fail, which is in contrast to results obtained from classical differential equation models. Our microsimulation is based on official census data and involves household composition and age distribution as the main population structure variables. Outside household contacts are characterised by an out-reproduction number R * which is the only free parameter of the model. For a subcritical domain we compute the time till extinction and prevalence as a function of the initial number of infected individuals and R * . For the Polish city of Wrocław we also discuss the combined impact of testing coverage and contact reduction. For both countries we estimate R * for disease progression until 20th of March 2020.