Modelling Immunity in Agent-based Models

Abstract: Vaccination policies play a central role in public health interventions and models are often used to assess the effectiveness of these policies. Many vaccines are leaky, in which case the observed vaccine effectiveness depends on the force of infection. Within models, the immunity parameters required for agent-based models to achieve observed vaccine effectiveness values are further influenced by model features such as its transmission algorithm, contact network structure, and approach to simulating vaccination. We present a method for determining parameters in agent-based models such that a set of target immunity values is achieved. We construct a dataset of desired population-level immunity values against various disease outcomes considering both vaccination and prior infection from COVID-19. This dataset incorporates immunological data, data collection methodologies, immunity models, and biological insights. We then describe how we choose minimal parameters for continuous waning immunity curves that result in those target values being realized in simulations. We use simulations of the household secondary attack rates to establish a relationship between the protection per infection attempt and overall immunity, thus accounting for the dependence of protection from acquisition on model features and the force of infection.