Analyzing Wuhan’s Strategies for Controlling Covid-19 Epidemic

Abstract

Because of the high infectiousness of COVID-19, the paper divided infected people into two groups, the confirmed cases to be treated and isolated in hospitals and unconfirmed carriers in free environment. First, a COVID-19 transmission model was built based on the classification of infected population, and a sensitivity analysis algorithm was constructed to optimize unknown parameters in the model, such as the probabilities of transmission and the diagnosis rate. Second, the transmission model and an optimization procedure were used to simulate the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan and Diamond Princess Cruise, and the simulation results were compared with actual data reported by governments. Finally, Wuhan’s strategies for controlling COVID-19 epidemic at different stages were analyzed through the COVID-19 transmission model. The results showed: only isolating and treating the confirmed patients suffering severe symptoms could not effectively inhibit the rapid spread of COVID-19; isolating all the confirmed patients could reduce the infected population over 30 times; besides isolating all the confirmed patients, the city-wide lockdowns and fast test methods could dramatically contain the spread of the epidemic, including decreasing the cumulative infected population and shortening the period of epidemic; compared with Wuhan’s control strategies, the protection and isolation measures of Diamond Princess Cruise could not effectively inhibit the spread of COVID-19.