Modeling-Based Estimate of the Vaccination Rate, Lockdown Rules and COVID-19

COVID-19 has become a severe infectious disease and has caused high morbidity and mortality worldwide. Restriction rules such as quarantine and city lockdown have been implemented to mitigate the spread of infection, leading to significant economic impacts. Fortunately, development and inoculation of COVID-19 vaccines are being conducted on an unprecedented scale. The effectiveness of vaccines raises a hope that city lockdown might not be necessary in the presence of ongoing vaccination, thereby minimizing economic loss. The question, however, is how fast and what type of vaccines should be inoculated to control the disease without limiting economic activity. Here, we set up a simulation scenario of COVID-19 outbreak in a modest city with a population of 2.5 million. The basic reproduction number (R₀) was ranging from 1.0 to 5.5. Vaccination rates at 1000/day, 10,000/day and 100,000/day with two types of vaccine (effectiveness v = 51% and 89%) were given. The results indicated that R₀ was a critical factor. Neither high vaccination rate (10,000 persons/day) nor high-end vaccine (v = 89%) could control the disease when the scenario was at R₀ = 5.5. Unless an extremely high vaccination rate was given (>4% of the entire population/per day), no significant difference was found between two types of vaccine. With the population scaled to 25 million, the required vaccination rate was >1,000,000/day, a quite unrealistic number. Nevertheless, with a slight reduction of R₀ from 5 to 3.5, a significant impact of vaccine inoculation on disease control was observed. Thus, our study raised the importance of estimating transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in a city before determining the subsequent policy.