Abstract
The rapid spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) confronts policy makers with the problem of measuring the effectiveness of containment strategies, balancing public health considerations with the economic costs of social distancing measures. We introduce a modified epidemic model that we name the controlled-SIR model, in which the disease reproduction rate evolves dynamically in response to political and societal reactions. An analytic solution is presented. The model reproduces official COVID-19 cases counts of a large number of regions and countries that surpassed the first peak of the outbreak. A single unbiased feedback parameter is extracted from field data and used to formulate an index that measures the efficiency of containment strategies (the CEI index). CEI values for a range of countries are given. For two variants of the controlled-SIR model, detailed estimates of the total medical and socio-economic costs are evaluated over the entire course of the epidemic. Costs comprise medical care cost, the economic cost of social distancing, as well as the economic value of lives saved. Under plausible parameters, strict measures fare better than a hands-off policy. Strategies based on current case numbers lead to substantially higher total costs than strategies based on the overall history of the epidemic.
Highlights
The model fits the seven-day centered averages of COVID-19 case counts well
For an in-depth description, epidemiology models need to cover a range of a spects[17], as the distinction between symptomatic and asymptomatic cases[18], which prevents in general the possibility of an explicit analytic handling
In the present work we pursue the alternative approach of retaining a minimal set of parameters, such that the resulting epidemiological model allows for an analytical description of the pandemic and its socio-economical aspects
Summary
The model (lines) fits the seven-day centered averages of COVID-19 case counts well. Political efforts to contain the pandemic, as social-distancing measures and non-pharmaceutical health interventions, are included in the controlled-SIR model as a dampening feedback mechanism. The controlled-SIR model is suitable to estimate the overall economic and health-related costs associated with distinct containment strategies, in particular when accumulated over the entire course of an epidemic outbreak. This approach, which is followed here, extends classical studies of the economic aspects of controlling contagious diseases. Further studies have discussed the relative effectiveness of control measures[25,28,29,30,31], and the possible future course of the disease[32,33]
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