How much testing and social distancing is required to control COVID-19? Some insight based on an age-differentiated compartmental model
Abstract
In this paper, we provide insights on how much testing and social distancing is required to control COVID-19. To this end, we develop a compartmental model that accounts for key aspects of the disease: 1) incubation time, 2) age-dependent symptom severity, and 3) testing and hospitalization delays; the model's parameters are chosen based on medical evidence, and, for concreteness, adapted to the German situation. Then, optimal mass-testing and age-dependent social-distancing policies are determined by solving optimal control problems both in open loop and within a model predictive control framework. We aim to minimize testing and/or social distancing until herd immunity sets in under a constraint on the number of available intensive care units. We find that an early and short lockdown is inevitable but can be slowly relaxed over the following months.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2011.01282,
title = {How much testing and social distancing is required to control COVID-19? Some insight based on an age-differentiated compartmental model},
author = {Sara Grundel and Stefan Heyder and Thomas Hotz and Tobias K. S. Ritschel and Philipp Sauerteig and Karl Worthmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.01282},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
25 pages, 14 figures