Figure 6.

For variant emergence to maintain or slightly reduce PASC prevalence, parameters must take on biologically implausible values. If infections are highly prevalent ($I^{*}=0.09$) while also being very short in duration (${\gamma }^{-1}=0.5$ weeks), and if pre-existing immunity is highly efficacious for preventing both reinfection ($\eta =0.65$) as well as PASC ($ϵ=1$), then variants with higher transmission rates can reduce PASC in the long run. PASC duration is modelled by an exponential distribution with mean ${\rho }^{-1}=1$ year. Other parameters: ${\delta }^{-1}=52$ weeks, $\alpha =1$ vaccine per year, $\mathcal{F}=0.01$, $s=0.1$.