Related papers: On the Effectiveness of Tracking and Testing in SE…
Attempts to curb the spread of coronavirus by introducing strict quarantine measures apparently have different effect in different countries: while the number of new cases has reportedly decreased in China and South Korea, it still exhibit…
Epidemics of infectious diseases are among the largest threats to the quality of life and the economic and social well-being of developing countries. The arsenal of measures against such epidemics is well-established, but costly and…
In this article we propose a compartmental model for the dynamics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We take into account the presence of asymptomatic infections and the main policies that have been adopted so far to contain the…
School environments are thought to play an important role in the community spread of airborne infections (e.g., influenza) because of the high mixing rates of school children. The closure of schools has therefore been proposed as efficient…
Using a stochastic Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) meta-population model of disease transmission, we present analytical calculations and numerical simulations dissecting the interplay between stochasticity and the division of a…
Motivated by the ongoing pandemic COVID-19, we propose a closed-loop framework that combines inference from testing data, learning the parameters of the dynamics and optimal resource allocation for controlling the spread of the…
This paper is concerned with a stochastic model for the spread of an SEIR (susceptible -> exposed (=latent) -> infective -> removed) epidemic with a contact tracing scheme, in which removed individuals may name some of their infectious…
In this paper, we present a discrete-time networked SEIR model using population flow, its derivation, and assumptions under which this model is well defined. We identify properties of the system's equilibria, namely the healthy states. We…
Contact tracing, the practice of isolating individuals who have been in contact with infected individuals, is an effective and practical way of containing disease spread. Here, we show that this strategy is particularly effective in the…
Major advances in public health have resulted from disease prevention. However, prevention of a new infectious disease by vaccination or pharmaceuticals is made difficult by the slow process of vaccine and drug development. We propose an…
The pandemic caused by the novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV2 has been responsible for life threatening health complications, and extreme pressure on healthcare systems. While preventive and definite curative medical interventions are yet to…
Implementing a lockdown for disease mitigation is a balancing act: Non-pharmaceutical interventions can reduce disease transmission significantly, but interventions also have considerable societal costs. Therefore, decision-makers need near…
Contact tracing and quarantine are well established non-pharmaceutical epidemic control tools. The paper aims to clarify the impact of these measures in COVID-19 epidemic. A new deterministic model is introduced (SEIRQ: susceptible,…
In this work, we provide a general mathematical formalism to study the optimal control of an epidemic, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, via incentives to lockdown and testing. In particular, we model the interplay between the government and…
We study equilibrium distancing during epidemics. Distancing reduces the individual's probability of getting infected but comes at a cost. It creates a single-peaked epidemic, flattens the curve and decreases the size of the epidemic. We…
We present a new mathematical model to explicitly capture the effects that the three restriction measures: the lockdown date and duration, social distancing and masks, and, schools and border closing, have in controlling the spread of…
The control of epidemic spreading is essential to avoid potential fatal consequences and also, to lessen unforeseen socio-economic impact. The need for effective control is exemplified during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in…
We formulate an optimal control problem to determine the lockdown policy to curb an epidemic where other control measures are not available yet. We present a unified framework to model the epidemic and economy that allows us to study the…
High impact epidemics constitute one of the largest threats humanity is facing in the 21st century. Testing, contact tracing and quarantining are critical in slowing down epidemic dynamics, but may prove insufficient for highly contagious…
In this paper, we develop a robust economic model predictive controller for the containment of stochastic Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Vigilant (SEIV) epidemic processes which drives the process to extinction quickly, while minimizing the…