Related papers: Policy Evaluation during a Pandemic
The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has exposed many flaws in the decision-making strategies used to distribute resources to combat global health crises. In this paper, we leverage reinforcement learning and optimization to improve…
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmingly demonstrated the need to accurately evaluate the effects of implementing new or altering existing nonpharmaceutical interventions. Since these interventions applied at the societal level…
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to upgrade systems for infectious disease surveillance and forecasting and modeling of the spread of infection, both of which inform evidence-based public health guidance and policies. Here, we…
Many research questions in public health and medicine concern sustained interventions in populations defined by substantive priorities. Existing methods to answer such questions typically require a measured covariate set sufficient to…
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a vast amount of growth for statistical models and methods which characterize features of disease outbreaks. One class of models that came to light in this regard has been the use of self-exciting point…
We examine COVID-19-related states of emergency (SOEs) using data on 180 countries in the period January 1 through June 12, 2020. The results suggest that states' declaration of SOEs is driven by both external and internal factors. A…
Efficient personnel scheduling plays a significant role in matching workload demand in organizations. However, staff scheduling is sometimes affected by unexpected events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that disrupt regular operations.…
This paper investigates the relationship between the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of community activity, and the financial index performance across 20 countries. First, we analyze which countries behaved similarly in 2020 with…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have tried to keep their territories safe by isolating themselves from others, limiting non-essential travel and imposing mandatory quarantines for travelers. While large-scale quarantine has been…
Crowd models can be used for the simulation of people movement in the built environment. Crowd model outputs have been used for evaluating safety and comfort of pedestrians, inform crowd management and perform forensic investigations.…
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted significant challenges in the allocation of vital healthcare resources. Existing epidemiological models, specifically compartmental models, aimed to predict the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its impact…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments faced the challenge of managing population behavior to prevent their healthcare systems from collapsing. Sweden adopted a strategy centered on voluntary sanitary recommendations while Belgium…
Several models have been developed to predict how the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, and how it could be contained with non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing restrictions and school and business closures. This paper…
The emergence of an epidemic evokes the need to monitor its spread and assess and validate any mitigation measures enacted by governments and administrative bodies in real time. We present here a method to observe and quantify this spread…
This paper is based on the observation that, during Covid-19 epidemic, the choice of which individuals should be tested has an important impact on the effectiveness of selective confinement measures. This decision problem is closely related…
Bayesian adaptive designs have gained popularity in all phases of clinical trials with numerous new developments in the past few decades. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to establish evidence for the effectiveness of vaccines,…
We design and analyze a multi-level game-theoretic model of hierarchical policy interventions for epidemic control, such as those in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our model captures the potentially mismatched priorities among a…
To date, the only effective means to respond to the spreading of COVID-19 pandemic are non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), which entail policies to reduce social activity and mobility restrictions. Quantifying their effect is…
This paper studies whether and how differently projected information about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic affects individuals' prosocial behavior and expectations on future outcomes. We conducted an online experiment with British…
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in how people are currently living their lives. To determine how to best reduce the effects of the pandemic and start reopening societies, governments have drawn insights from…