We're interested in how non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing can affect the transmission and evolution of pathogens during large-scale outbreaks.
Key findings
- Immunocompromised hosts could facilitate (rather than simply speed up) the antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2 by allowing the virus to cross fitness valleys.
- Shielding strategies are unlikely to have been effective at reducing deaths during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even a small (20%) reduction in the effectiveness of shielding would have likely led to a large increase (>150%) in the number of deaths compared to perfect shielding.
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) tend to reduce the evolution of novel variants, but it is possible for more transmissible variants with high cross immunity to have a greater probability of emerging at intermediate levels of NPIs