Related papers: Optimal intervention strategies for minimizing tot…
In the absence of drugs and vaccines, policymakers use non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing to decrease rates of disease-causing contact, with the aim of reducing or delaying the epidemic peak. These measures carry…
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…
Epidemics of infectious diseases posing a serious risk to human health have occurred throughout history. During recent epidemics there has been much debate about policy, including how and when to impose restrictions on behaviour.…
Governments across the world are currently facing the task of selecting suitable intervention strategies to cope with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a highly challenging task, since harsh measures may result in economic…
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…
The spread of COVID-19 has been thwarted in most countries through non-pharmaceutical interventions. In particular, the most effective measures in this direction have been the stay-at-home and closure strategies of businesses and schools.…
National responses to the Covid-19 pandemic varied markedly across countries, from business-as-usual to complete shutdowns. Policies aimed at disrupting the viral transmission cycle and preventing the healthcare system from being…
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…
When effective medical treatment and vaccination are not available, non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, home quarantine and far-reaching shutdown of public life are the only available strategies to prevent the spread…
We consider the problem of controlling an SIR-model epidemic by temporarily reducing the rate of contact within a population. The control takes the form of a multiplicative reduction in the contact rate of infectious individuals. The…
The recent COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the first stages of a pandemic. Among these, lockdown policies proved unavoidable yet extremely costly from an economic perspective. To better…
We study the problem of a policymaker who aims at taming the spread of an epidemic while minimizing its associated social costs. The main feature of our model lies in the fact that the disease's transmission rate is a diffusive stochastic…
In this study, we present a new epidemiological model, with contamination from confirmed and unreported. We also compute equilibria and study their stability without intervention strategies. Optimal control theory has proven to be a…
Restrictions on social and economic activities, as well as vaccinations, have been a key intervention in containing the COVID-19 epidemic. Our work focuses on better understanding the options available to policymakers under the conditions…
During a pandemic, there are conflicting demands arising from public health and economic cost. Lockdowns are a common way of containing infections, but they adversely affect the economy. We study the question of how to minimise the economic…
We analyze an optimal control version of a simple SIRS epidemiology model. The policy maker can adopt policies to diminish the contact rate between infected and susceptible individuals, at a specific economic cost. The arrival of a vaccine…
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…
How much and when should we limit economic and social activity to ensure that the health-care system is not overwhelmed during an epidemic? We study a setting where ICU resources are constrained while suppression is costly (e.g., limiting…
Combating an epidemic entails finding a plan that describes when and how to apply different interventions, such as mask-wearing mandates, vaccinations, school or workplace closures. An optimal plan will curb an epidemic with minimal loss of…
Epidemic control is of great importance for human society. Adjusting interacting partners is an effective individualized control strategy. Intuitively, it is done either by shortening the interaction time between susceptible and infected…