Speaker: Richard Kollár, Comenius University
Date: October 7, 2021
Title: Three lessons we have learned about the epidemiological models during SARS-CoV-2 pandemics
Abstract: Traditional compartmental models were very successful in description of epidemic dynamics in the past. However, during the present pandemic, various assumptions of these models are systematically violated. We will present three different lessons we have learned based on the observed data from global pandemic statistics but also from a unique mass testing in Slovakia in the fall 2020. We show that the data indicate an algebraic decay of the reproduction number in time in observed data during individual pandemic waves, and that the spatial trends in incidence are exponential. We also confirm that the concept of herd immunity that is implied by a wide class of compartmental models fails in a regime that is expected be present during the current pandemics.