Leaky or polarised immunity: Non-Markovian modelling highlights the impact of immune memory assumptions.

ABSTRACT: Mathematical models tend to oversimplify the biological details of vaccine or infection-derived immunity effectiveness. Yet, epidemiological outcomes may diverge when assuming polarised immunity-individuals are either fully susceptible or completely immune-compared to leaky immunity-where all individuals are partially protected. We explore the differences between the two by taking advantage of a non-Markovian framework, which allows us to explicitly record the 'age' of the immunity and vary its effectiveness accordingly. A basic scenario reveals that leaky immunity leads to a shorter time between reinfections. A more data-driven scenario based on SARS-CoV-2 data finds that leaky immunity yields substantially more reinfections than polarised immunity and a higher number of infected individu

SUBMITTER: Reyne B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12407549 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature