Publications by authors named "Luiz Henrique Duczmal"
Article Synopsis
- Manaus is a critical location for studying COVID-19, where researchers are testing five different hypotheses to explain the city's second wave of infections.
- Among these hypotheses, the more transmissible gamma variant, potential overestimation of herd immunity, and the loss of immunity are key factors being considered.
- The study's findings suggest that the gamma variant did not cause the second wave but became dominant subsequently, and that increased transmission rates and immunity loss alone do not fully account for the surge in cases.
Is Brazil's COVID-19 epicenter really approaching herd immunity? A recent study estimated that in October 2020 three-quarters of the population of Manaus (the capital of the largest state in the Brazilian Amazon) had contact with SARS-CoV-2. We show that 46% of the Manaus population having had contact with SARS-CoV-2 at that time is a more plausible estimate, and that Amazonia is still far from herd immunity. The second wave of COVID-19 is now evident in Manaus.
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- This study documents the first confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in the Amazon region of Brazil, showing that the same virus lineage was involved in both infections.
- The patient was asymptomatic during the initial infection but experienced more severe symptoms upon reinfection.
- The researchers suggest there may be a recessive genetic trait within the Amazonian population that limits the development of immune memory against SARS-CoV-2.
Considering numerical simulations, this study shows that the so-called vertical social distancing health policy is ineffective to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. We present the SEIR-Net model, for a network of social group interactions, as a development of the classic mathematical model of SEIR epidemics (Susceptible-Exposed-Infected (symptomatic and asymptomatic)-Removed). In the SEIR-Net model, we can simulate social contacts between groups divided by age groups and analyze different strategies of social distancing.
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