A study on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 considering the impact of asymptomatic infection

TL;DR

This study develops mathematical models to analyze how asymptomatic COVID-19 infections influence epidemic spread, fitting data across variants, and emphasizes the importance of combined control measures to mitigate hidden transmission.

Contribution

The paper introduces a comprehensive mathematical modeling approach to quantify asymptomatic infection roles across COVID-19 variants and evaluates control strategies based on epidemic data.

Findings

Asymptomatic proportion increased over variants

Transmission speed and intensity rose with new strains

Higher detection rates reduce overall case numbers

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic has been spreading around the world for nearly three years, and asymptomatic infections have exacerbated the spread of the epidemic. To evaluate the role of asymptomatic infections in the spread of the epidemic, we develop mathematical models to assess the proportion of asymptomatic infections caused by different strains of the main covid-19 variants. The analysis shows that when the control reproduction number is less than 1, the disease-free equilibrium point of the model is globally asymptotically stable; and when the control reproduction number is greater than 1, the endemic equilibrium point exists and is unique, and is locally asymptotically stable. We fit the epidemic data in the four time periods corresponding to the selected 614G, Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants. The fitting results show that, from the comparison of the four time periods, the proportion of asymptomatic persons among the infected persons gradually increased. We also predict the peak time and peak value for the four time periods, and the results indicate that the transmission speed and transmission intensity of the variant strains increased to some extent. Finally, we discuss the impact of the detection ratio of symptomatic infections on the spread of the epidemic. The results show that with the increase of the detection ratio, the cumulative number of cases has dropped significantly, but the decline in the proportion of asymptomatic infections is not obvious. Therefore, in view of the hidden transmission of asymptomatic infections, the cooperation between various epidemic prevention and control policies is required to effectively curb the spread of the epidemic.