A Simple Model to Estimate the Transmissibility of SARS-COV-2 Beta, Delta and Omicron Variants in South Africa

Background: COVID-19 pandemic caused multiple mortality waves in South Africa. At the same time, the wild strain and three variants of SARS-COV-2 dominated in turn. Method: We used state-of-the-art mathematical modeling to estimate the time-varying transmissibility of SARS-COV-2 and the relative transmissibility of the three variants, ie, Beta, Delta and Omicron.Result: We found that the transmissibility of Beta, Delta and Omicron variants are about 73%, 87%, and 276% higher than their proceeding variants.Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, our model is the first simple model which can simulate the multiple mortality waves and the three variant replacements in South Africa. The transmissibility of Omicron variant is substantially higher than previous variants.