Related papers: Effective Testing Policies for Controlling an Epid…
We propose a versatile model with a flexible choice of control for an early-pandemic outbreak prevention when vaccine/drug is not yet available. At that stage, control is often limited to non-medical interventions like social distancing and…
A simple, but ``classical``, stochastic model for epidemic spread in a finite, but large, population is studied. The progress of the epidemic can be divided into three different phases that requires different tools to analyse. Initially the…
A crucial aspect of managing a public health crisis is to effectively balance prevention and mitigation strategies, while taking their socio-economic impact into account. In particular, determining the influence of different…
During the early months of the current COVID-19 pandemic, social-distancing measures effectively slowed disease transmission in many countries in Europe and Asia, but the same benefits have not been observed in some developing countries…
This paper considers a simple model where a social planner can influence the spread-intensity of an infection wave, and, consequently, also the economic activity and population health, through a single parameter. Population health is…
We propose a simple SIR model in order to investigate the impact of various confinement strategies on a most virulent epidemic. Our approach is motivated by the current COVID-19 pandemic. The main hypothesis is the existence of two…
Research in epidemiology often focusses on designing interventions that result in the number of infected individuals asymptotically approaching zero, without considering that this number may peak at high values during transients. Recent…
In the context of epidemiology, policies for disease control are often devised through a mixture of intuition and brute-force, whereby the set of logically conceivable policies is narrowed down to a small family described by a few…
Frequent emergence of communicable diseases has been a major concern worldwide. Lack of sufficient resources to mitigate the disease-burden makes the situation even more challenging for lower-income countries. Hence, strategy development…
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.…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, case isolation emerged as a key non-pharmaceutical intervention in pandemic response. Its effectiveness hinges on the timing of isolation, which is often dictated by the onset of contagiousness. While…
Several non-pharmaceutical interventions have been proposed to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the large scale, these empirical solutions, often associated with extended and complete lockdowns, attempt to minimize the costs…
The World Health Organization (WHO) made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. To the COVID-19 outbreak, there is no vaccination and no treatment. The only way to control the COVID-19 outbreak is…
Group testing is an efficient method for testing a large population to detect infected individuals. In this paper, we consider an efficient adaptive two stage group testing scheme. Using a straightforward analysis, we characterize the…
In epidemic or pandemic situations, resources for testing the infection status of individuals may be scarce. Although group testing can help to significantly increase testing capabilities, the (repeated) testing of entire populations can…
The design of an efficient curing policy, able to stem an epidemic process at an affordable cost, has to account for the structure of the population contact network supporting the contagious process. Thus, we tackle the problem of…
We analyze the optimal control of disease prevention and treatment in a basic SIS model. We develop a simple macroeconomic setup in which the social planner determines how to optimally intervene, through income taxation, in order to…
The COVID-19 pandemic left its unique mark on the 21st century as one of the most significant disasters in history, triggering governments all over the world to respond with a wide range of interventions. However, these restrictions come…
The implementation of public policies is crucial in controlling the spread of COVID-19. However, the effectiveness of different policies can vary across different aspects of epidemic containment. Identifying the most effective policies is…
When testing for infections, the standard method is to test each subject individually. If testing methodology is such that samples from multiple subjects can be efficiently combined and tested at once, yielding a positive results if any one…