Related papers: Lockdown interventions in SIR model: Is the reprod…
This study investigates the influence of different types of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on epidemic progression using SIR compartmental models. We analyze the optimization of two distinct targets: the final epidemic size and the…
Strong social distancing restrictions have been crucial to controlling the COVID-19 outbreak thus far, and the next question is when and how to relax these restrictions. A sequential timing of relaxing restrictions across groups is explored…
In the context of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, mathematical modelling has played a fundamental role for making forecasts, simulating scenarios and evaluating the impact of preventive political, social and pharmaceutical measures. Optimal control…
Optimal control problems reflecting the finding of effective quarantine strategies are considered for two control SEIR~type models describing the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the human population. The properties of the corresponding…
We analyze an approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic without shutting down the economy while staying within the capacity of the healthcare system. We base our analysis on a detailed heterogeneous epidemiological model, which takes into…
In this paper, we propose a two-group SIR epidemic model to simulate the outcome of stay-at-home policy and wearing face masks during the first COVID-19 epidemic wave in the United States. Based on our proposed model, we further use the…
Balancing the societal costs of non-pharmaceutical interventions with epidemic suppression requires adaptive feedback control. Rather than relying on state-dependent operational caps, we formulate an infinite-horizon optimal control problem…
This paper proposes a feedback design that effectively copes with uncertainties for reliable epidemic monitoring and control. There are several optimization-based methods to estimate the parameters of an epidemic model by utilizing past…
Within the context of SEIR models, we consider a lockdown that is both imposed and lifted at an early stage of an epidemic. We show that, in these models, although such a lockdown may delay deaths, it eventually does not avert a significant…
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are crucial for controlling pandemics, but existing research often overlooks the heterogeneity of individual behavior, which can lead to inaccurate evaluations of the effectiveness of strategies. In…
Since early 2020, the world has been dealing with a raging pandemic outbreak: COVID-19. A year later, vaccines have become accessible, but in limited quantities, so that governments needed to devise a strategy to decide which part of the…
We consider the problem of optimal allocation strategies for a (perfect) vaccine in an infinite-metapopulation model (including SIS, SIR, SEIR,. . .), when the loss function is given by the effective reproduction number Re, which is defined…
A model of reactive social distancing in epidemics is proposed, in which the infection rate changes with the number infected. The final-size equation for the total number that the epidemic will infect can be derived analytically, as can the…
Mitigation measures are essential for controlling the spread of infectious diseases during pandemics and epidemics, but they impose considerable societal, individual, and economic costs. We developed a general optimization framework to…
Epidemic risk assessment poses inherent challenges, with traditional approaches often failing to balance health outcomes and economic constraints. This paper presents a data-driven decision support tool that models epidemiological dynamics…
The goal of this work is to study the optimal controls for the COVID-19 epidemic in Brazil. We consider an age-structured SEIRQ model with quarantine compartment, where the controls are the quarantine entrance parameters. We then compare…
Pandemics can bring a range of devastating consequences to public health and the world economy. Identifying the most effective control strategies has been the imperative task all around the world. Various public health control strategies…
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a great catastrophe that upended human lives and caused millions of deaths all over the world. The rapid spread of the virus, with its early-stage exponential growth and subsequent 'waves', caught many medical…
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced policy makers to decree urgent confinements to stop a rapid and massive contagion. However, after that stage, societies are being forced to find an equilibrium between the need to reduce contagion rates and…
We study an optimal control problem for a non-autonomous SEIRS model with incidence given by a general function of the infective, the susceptible and the total population, and with vaccination and treatment as control variables. We prove…