Viruses, Vol. 12, Pages 1055: The Epidemiological Signature of Pathogen Populations That Vary in the Relationship between Free-Living Parasite Survival and Virulence

In this study, we utilize a mathematical model motivated by aspects of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) natural history to investigate how evolutionary changes in survival may influence several aspects of disease dynamics at the epidemiological scale. Across virulence–survival relationships (where these traits are either positively or negatively correlated), we found that small changes (5% above and below the nominal value) in survival can have a meaningful effect on certain outbreak features, including R0, and on the size of the infectious peak in the population. These results highlight the importance of properly understanding the mechanistic relationship between virulence and parasite survival, as the evolution of increased survival across different relationships with virulence may have considerably different epidemiological signatures.
Source: Viruses - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research