Predictability of viral load dynamics in the early phases of SARS-CoV-2 through a model-based approach

Abstract

A pipeline to evaluate the evolution of viral dynamics based on a new model-driven approach has been developed in the present study. The proposed methods exploit real data and the multiscale structure of the infection dynamics to provide robust predictions of the epidemic dynamics. We focused on viral load kinetics whose dynamical features are typically available in the symptomatic stage of the infection. Hence, the epidemiological evolution was obtained by relying on a compartmental approach characterized by a varying infection rate to estimate early-stage viral load dynamics, of which few data are available. We tested the proposed approach with real data of SARS-CoV-2 viral load kinetics collected from patients living in an Italian province. The considered database refers to early-phase infections, whose viral load kinetics have not been affected by the mass vaccination policies in Italy.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2 viral load; SIR with age of infection; mathematical epidemiology; uncertainty quantification.