Montalbán, AntonioCorder, Rodrigo M.Gomes, M. Gabriela M.2022-09-202022-09-202022-06-300303-6812PURE: 46650748PURE UUID: 41b4b0df-6764-4c94-a0b2-93b3a39184a8Scopus: 85133133357PubMed: 35773525PubMedCentral: PMC9246817WOS: 000819425300001http://hdl.handle.net/10362/143866Funding Information: We thank Paul McKeigue and Joel Miller for valuable discussions and two anonymous reviewers for constructive criticisms and suggestions. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).We study a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model considered by Aguas et al. (In: Herd immunity thresholds for SARS-CoV-2 estimated from unfolding epidemics, 2021), Gomes et al. (In: J Theor Biol. 540:111063, 2022) where individuals are assumed to differ in their susceptibility or exposure to infection. Under this heterogeneity assumption, epidemic growth is effectively suppressed when the percentage of the population having acquired immunity surpasses a critical level - the herd immunity threshold - that is lower than in homogeneous populations. We derive explicit formulas to calculate herd immunity thresholds and stable configurations, especially when susceptibility or exposure are gamma distributed, and explore extensions of the model.22546624engEffective reproduction numberHerd immunity thresholdIndividual variationSEIR modelSelectionModelling and SimulationAgricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)Applied Mathematicsjournal article10.1007/s00285-022-01771-xhttps://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85133133357