Related papers: Optimizing infectious disease mitigation under dyn…

This work introduces a novel epidemiological model that simultaneously considers multiple viral strains, reinfections due to waning immunity response over time and an optimal control formulation. This enables us to derive optimal mitigation…

This article considers the minimization of the total number of infected individuals over the course of an epidemic in which the rate of infectious contacts can be reduced by time-dependent nonpharmaceutical interventions. The societal and…

In an emerging pandemic, policymakers need to make important decisions with limited information, for example choosing between a mitigation, suppression or elimination strategy. These strategies may require trade-offs to be made between the…

During an infectious disease outbreak, policymakers must balance medical costs with social and economic burdens and seek interventions that minimize both. To support this decision-making process, we developed a framework that integrates…

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.…

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…

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…

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 COVID-19 pandemic has posed a policy making crisis where efforts to slow down or end the pandemic conflict with economic priorities. This paper provides mathematical analysis of optimal disease control policies with idealized…

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…

Increasing the infection risk early in an epidemic is individually and socially optimal under some parameter values. The reason is that the early patients recover or die before the peak of the epidemic, which flattens the peak. This…

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…

This paper introduces a new optimal control model to describe and control the dynamics of infectious diseases. In the present model, the average time of isolation (i.e. hospitalization) of infectious population is the main time-dependent…

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…

Understanding dynamics of an infectious disease helps in designing appropriate strategies for containing its spread in a population. Recent mathematical models are aimed at studying dynamics of some specific types of infectious diseases. In…

After the first lockdown in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many countries faced difficulties in balancing infection control with economics. Due to limited prior knowledge, economists began researching this issue using cost-benefit…

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…

We present a local spread model of disease transmission on a regular network and compare different control options ranging from treating the whole population to local control in a well-defined neighborhood of an infectious individual.…

This paper analyses the optimal control of infectious disease propagation using a classic susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model characterised by permanent immunity and the absence of available vaccines. The control is performed over a…

As infectious disease outbreaks emerge, public health agencies often enact vaccination and social distancing measures to slow transmission. Their success depends on not only strategies and resources, but also public adherence. Individual…