Forecasting the effects of vaccination on the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia using SEIRV compartmental models

TL;DR

This study used SEIRV models to forecast how vaccination affected the spread of COVID-19 in Malaysia during the Delta outbreak.

Contribution

The study introduces SEIRV models tailored to Malaysia's vaccination program to forecast case trends during the Delta wave.

Findings

Scenario 1 forecasts closely matched observed case peaks during the Delta outbreak.

Vaccination reduced cumulative cases by up to 55.19% compared to the worst-case scenario.

The models helped inform pandemic management in Malaysia.

Abstract

This study aimed to develop susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered-vaccinated (SEIRV) models to examine the effects of vaccination on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case trends in Malaysia during Phase 3 of the National COVID-19 Immunization Program amidst the Delta outbreak.

SEIRV models were developed and validated using COVID-19 case and vaccination data from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia, from June 21, 2021 to July 21, 2021 to generate forecasts of COVID-19 cases from July 22, 2021 to December 31, 2021. Three scenarios were examined to measure the effects of vaccination on COVID-19 case trends. Scenarios 1 and 2 represented the trends taking into account the earliest and latest possible times of achieving full vaccination for 80% of the adult population by October 31, 2021 and December 31, 2021, respectively. Scenario 3 described a scenario without vaccination for comparison.

In scenario 1, forecasted cases peaked on August 28, 2021, which was close to the peak of observed cases on August 26, 2021. The observed peak was 20.27% higher than in scenario 1 and 10.37% lower than in scenario 2. The cumulative observed cases from July 22, 2021 to December 31, 2021 were 13.29% higher than in scenario 1 and 55.19% lower than in scenario 2. The daily COVID-19 case trends closely mirrored the forecast of COVID-19 cases in scenario 1 (best-case scenario).

Our study demonstrated that COVID-19 vaccination reduced COVID-19 case trends during the Delta outbreak. The compartmental models developed assisted in the management and control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia.

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