We propose a compartmental mathematical model for the spread of the COVID-19 disease with special focus on the transmissibility of super-spreaders individuals. We compute the basic reproduction number threshold, we study the local stability of the disease free equilibrium in terms of the basic reproduction number, and we investigate the sensitivity of the model with respect to the variation of each one of its parameters. Numerical simulations show the suitability of the proposed COVID-19 model for the outbreak that occurred in Wuhan, China.
Background: Wuhan, China was the epicenter of COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of current study is to understand the infection transmission dynamics before intervention measures were taken. Methods: Data and key events were searched through pubmed and internet. Epidemiological data were calculated using data extracted from a variety of data sources. Results: We established a timeline showing by January 1, 2020, Chinese authorities had been presented convincing evidence of human-to-human transmission; however, it was not until January 20, 2020 that this information was shared with the public. Our st…
The ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic threatens the health of humans and causes great economic losses. Predictive modelling and forecasting the epidemic trends are essential for developing countermeasures to mitigate this pandemic. We develop a network model, where each node represents an individual and the edges represent contacts between individuals where the infection can spread. The individuals are classified based on the number of contacts they have each day (their node degrees) and their infection status. The transmission network model was respectively fitted to the re…
There were 27 novel coronavirus pneumonia cases found in Wuhan, China in December 2019, named as 2019-nCoV temporarily and COVID-19 formally by WHO on 11 February, 2020. In December 2019 and January 2020, COVID-19 has spread in large scale among the population, which brought terrible disaster to the life and property of the Chinese people. In this paper, we will first analyze the feature and pattern of the virus transmission, and discuss the key impact factors and uncontrollable factors of epidemic transmission based on public data. Then the virus transmission can be modelled and used for the …
In a move described as unprecedented in public health history, starting 24 January 2020, China imposed quarantine and isolation restrictions in Wuhan, a city of more than 10 million people. This raised the question: is mass quarantine and isolation effective as a social tool in addition to its scientific use as a medical tool? In an effort to address this question, using a epidemiological model driven approach augmented by machine learning, we show that the quarantine and isolation measures implemented in Wuhan brought down the effective reproduction number R(t) of the CoVID-19 spread from R(t…
The goal of this study is to establish a general framework for predicting the so-called critical Turning Period in an infectious disease epidemic such as the COVID-19 outbreak in China early this year. This framework enabled a timely prediction of the turning period when applied to Wuhan COVID-19 epidemic and informed the relevant authority for taking appropriate and timely actions to control the epidemic. It is expected to provide insightful information on turning period for the world's current battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. The underlying mathematical model in our framework is the ind…
Since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, numerous forecasting models have been proposed to project the trajectory of coronavirus infection cases. We propose a new discrete-time Markov chain transition matrix model that directly incorporates stochastic behavior and for which parameter estimation is straightforward from available data. Using such data from China's Hubei province (for which Wuhan is the provincial capital city), the model is shown to be flexible, robust, and accurate. As a result, it has been adopted by the first Shanghai assistance medical team in Wuhan's Jinyin…
We propose a qualitative analysis of a recent fractional-order COVID-19 model. We start by showing that the model is mathematically and biologically well posed. Then, we give a proof on the global stability of the disease free equilibrium point. Finally, some numerical simulations are performed to ensure stability and convergence of the disease free equilibrium point.
The outbreak of novel coronavirus-caused pneumonia (COVID-19) in Wuhan has attracted worldwide attention. Here, we propose a generalized SEIR model to analyze this epidemic. Based on the public data of National Health Commission of China from Jan. 20th to Feb. 9th, 2020, we reliably estimate key epidemic parameters and make predictions on the inflection point and possible ending time for 5 different regions. According to optimistic estimation, the epidemics in Beijing and Shanghai will end soon within two weeks, while for most part of China, including the majority of cities in Hubei province, …
In December 2019, a novel coronavirus was found in a seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, China. WHO officially named this coronavirus as COVID-19. Since the first patient was hospitalized on December 12, 2019, China has reported a total of 78,824 confirmed CONID-19 cases and 2,788 deaths as of February 28, 2020. Wuhan's cumulative confirmed cases and deaths accounted for 61.1% and 76.5% of the whole China mainland , making it the priority center for epidemic prevention and control. Meanwhile, 51 countries and regions outside China have reported 4,879 confirmed cases and 79 deaths as of February…
We report the detection of Nipah virus in an infectious clone format, a BSL4-level pathogen and CDC-designated Bioterrorism Agent, in raw RNA-Seq sequencing reads deposited by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) produced from five December 2019 patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Research involving Nipah infectious clones has never been reported to have occured at the WIV. These patient samples have been previously reported to contain reads from several other viruses: Influenza A, Spodoptera frugiperda rhabdovirus and Nipah. Previous authors have interpreted the presence of these virus sequen…
Since the first recording of what we now call Covid-19 infection in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on Dec 31, 2019, the disease has spread worldwide and met with a wide variety of social distancing and quarantine policies. The effectiveness of these responses is notoriously difficult to quantify as individuals travel, violate policies deliberately or inadvertently, and infect others without themselves being detected. In this paper, we attempt to interpret and extrapolate from publicly available data using a mixed first-principles epidemiological equations and data-driven neural network model. Le…
In December 2019, COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. SARS-CoV-2 rapidly spread to the whole Chinese mainland with the people during the Chinese Spring Festival Travel Rush. As of 19 February 2020, 74576 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been reported in Chinese Mainland. What kind of cities have more confirmed cases, and is there any relationship between GDP and confirmed cases? In this study, we explored the relationship between the confirmed cases of COVID-19 and GDP at the prefectural-level, found a positive correlation between them. This finding warns high GDP are…
During the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to control the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the causative pathogen of COVID-19. Among those NPIs, quarantine measures were widely adopted and enforced through stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders. Understanding the effectiveness of quarantine measures can inform decision-making and control planning during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and for future disease outbreaks. In this study, we use mathematical models to evaluate the impact of quarantine measures on COVID-19 spread in …
The COVID-19 (formerly, 2019-nCoV) epidemic has become a global health emergency, as such, WHO declared PHEIC. China has taken the most hit since the outbreak of the virus, which could be dated as far back as late November by some experts. It was not until January 23rd that the Wuhan government finally recognized the severity of the epidemic and took a drastic measure to curtain the virus spread by closing down all transportation connecting the outside world. In this study, we seek to answer a few questions: How did the virus get spread from the epicenter Wuhan city to the rest of the country?…
In this paper, we investigate the ongoing dynamics of COVID-19 in India after its emergence in Wuhan, China in December 2019. We discuss the effect of nationwide lockdown implemented in India on March 25, 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) model is used to forecast active COVID-19 cases in India considering the effect of nationwide lockdown and possible inflation in the active cases after its removal on May 3, 2020. Our model predicts that with the ongoing lockdown, the peak of active infected cases around 43,000 will occur in the mid of May…
COVID-19 is a new type of coronavirus disease which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It originated in China in the month of December 2019 and quickly started to spread within the country. On 31st December 2019, it was first reported to country office of World Health Organization (WHO) in China. Since then, it has spread to most of the countries around the globe. However, there has been a recent rise in trend in believing that it would go away during summer days, which has not yet been properly investigated. In this paper, relationship of daily number o…
A number of models in mathematical epidemiology have been developed to account for control measures such as vaccination or quarantine. However, COVID-19 has brought unprecedented social distancing measures, with a challenge on how to include these in a manner that can explain the data but avoid overfitting in parameter inference. We here develop a simple time-dependent model, where social distancing effects are introduced analogous to coarse-grained models of gene expression control in systems biology. We apply our approach to understand drastic differences in COVID-19 infection and fatality c…
Epidemic models play a key role in understanding and responding to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. Widely used compartmental models are static and are of limited use to evaluate intervention strategies with the emerging pandemic. Applying the technology of data assimilation, we propose a Bayesian updating approach for estimating epidemiological parameters using observable information for the purpose of assessing the impacts of different intervention strategies. We adopt a concise renewal model and propose new parameters by disentangling the reduction of instantaneous reproduction number Rt int…
The outbreak of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan and other cities in China in 2019 has become a global pandemic as declared by World Health Organization (WHO) in the first quarter of 2020 . The delay in diagnosis, limited hospital resources and other treatment resources leads to rapid spread of COVID-19. In this article, we consider an optimal control COVID-19 transmission model and assess the impact of some control measures that can lead to the reduction of exposed and infectious individuals in the population. We investigate three control strategies for this deadly infectious disease us…
A mathematical model is proposed for quantitative description of the outbreak of novel coronavirus COVID-19 in China. Although the model is relatively simple, the comparison with the public data shows that an exact solution solution of the model (with the correctly-specified parameters) leads to the results, which are in good agreement with the measured data. Prediction of the total number of the COVID-19 cases is discussed and an example is presented using the measured data in Austria.
During an infectious disease outbreak, biases in the data and complexities of the underlying dynamics pose significant challenges in mathematically modelling the outbreak and designing policy. Motivated by the ongoing response to COVID-19, we provide a toolkit of statistical and mathematical models beyond the simple SIR-type differential equation models for analysing the early stages of an outbreak and assessing interventions. In particular, we focus on parameter estimation in the presence of known biases in the data, and the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions in enclosed subpopulation…
Disease transmission is studied through disciplines like epidemiology, applied mathematics, and statistics. Mathematical simulation models for transmission have implications in solving public and personal health challenges. The SIR model uses a compartmental approach including dynamic and nonlinear behavior of transmission through three factors: susceptible, infected, and removed (recovered and deceased) individuals. Using the Lambert W Function, we propose a framework to study solutions of the SIR model. This demonstrates the applications of COVID-19 transmission data to model the spread of a…
To model the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus in Russian regions and in Moscow, a discrete logistic equation describing the increase in the number of cases is used. To check the adequacy of the mathematical model, the simulation results were compared with the spread of coronavirus in China, in a number of European and Asian countries, and the United States. The parameters of the logistics equation for Russia, Moscow and other large regions were determined in the interval (01.03 - 08.04). A comparative analysis of growth rates of COVID-19 infected population for different countries and regions is…
We consider the pandemic spreading of COVID-19 for some selected countries after the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan City, China. We estimated the infection rate and the initial infected individuals of COVID-19 by using the officially reported data at the early stage of the epidemic for the susceptible (S), infectable (I), quarantined (Q), and the cofirmed recovered (Rk) population model, so called SIQRk model. In the reported data we know the quarantined cases and the recovered cases. We can not know the recovered cases from the asymptomatic cases. In the SIQRk model we can estimated the…
In the absence of neither an effective treatment or vaccine and with an incomplete understanding of the epidemiological cycle, Govt. has implemented a nationwide lockdown to reduce COVID-19 transmission in India. To study the effect of social distancing measure, we considered a new mathematical model on COVID-19 that incorporates lockdown effect. By validating our model to the data on notified cases from five different states and overall India, we estimated several epidemiologically important parameters as well as the basic reproduction number ($R_{0}$). Combining the mechanistic mathematical …
Within a short period of time, COVID-19 grew into a world-wide pandemic. Transmission by pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic viral carriers rendered intervention and containment of the disease extremely challenging. Based on reported infection case studies, we construct an epidemiological model that focuses on transmission around the symptom onset. The model is calibrated against incubation period and pairwise transmission statistics during the initial outbreaks of the pandemic outside Wuhan with minimal non-pharmaceutical interventions. Mathematical treatment of the model yields explicit express…
A mathematical model for estimating the risk of airborne transmission of a respiratory infection such as COVID-19, is presented. The model employs basic concepts from fluid dynamics and incorporates the known scope of factors involved in the airborne transmission of such diseases. Simplicity in the mathematical form of the model is by design, so that it can serve not only as a common basis for scientific inquiry across disciplinary boundaries, but also be understandable by a broad audience outside science and academia. The caveats and limitations of the model are discussed in detail. The model…
The ongoing pandemic of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan, China in the end of 2019. It has already affected more than 300,000 people, with the number of deaths nearing 13000 across the world. As it has been posing a huge threat to global public health, it is of utmost importance to identify the rate at which the disease is spreading. In this study, we propose a time series model to analyze the trend pattern of the incidence of COVID-19 outbreak. We also incorporate information on total or partial lockdown, wherever available, into the model. The model is concise in structure, an…
On the base of logic discrete equations system mathematical modeling of COVID-19 epidemic spread was carried out in the world and in the countries with the largest number of infected people such as the USA, Brasil, Russia and India in the first half of 2020. It was shown that for the countries with strong restrictive measures the spread of COVID-19 fit on a single wave with small capacity as for a number of countries with violation of restrictive measures the spread of the epidemic fit on a waves superposition. For countries with large population mixing, the spread of the epidemic today also f…
An epidemiological compartmental model was used to simulate social distancing strategies to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent a second wave in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Optimization using genetic algorithm was used to determine the optimal solutions. Our results suggest the best-case strategy for Sao Paulo is to maintain or increase the current magnitude of social distancing for at least 60 more days and increase the current levels of personal protection behaviors by a minimum of 10% (e.g., wearing facemasks, proper hand hygiene and avoid agglomeration). Followed by a long-term oscillatory le…
The present article studies the extension of two deterministic models for describing the novel coronavirus pandemic crisis, the SIR model and the SEIR model. The models were studied and compared to real data in order to support the validity of each description and extract important information regarding the pandemic, such as the basic reproductive number R0, which might provide useful information concerning the rate of increase of the pandemic predicted by each model. We next proceed to making predictions and comparing more complex models derived from the SEIR model with the SIRD model, in ord…
The COVID-19 epidemic that emerged in Wuhan China at the end of 2019 hit Italy particularly hard, yielding the implementation of strict national lockdown rules (Phase 1). There is now a hot ongoing debate in Italy and abroad on what the best strategy is to restart a country to exit a national lockdown (Phase 2). Previous studies have focused on modelling possible restarting scenarios at the national level, overlooking the fact that Italy, as other nations around the world, is divided in administrative regions who can independently oversee their own share of the Italian National Health Service.…
After the detection of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in late December, the cases of Covid-19 have spiralled out around the globe. Due to the clinical similarity of Covid-19 with other flulike syndromes, patients are assayed for other pathogens of influenza like illness. There have been reported cases of co-infection amongst patients with Covid-19. Bacteria for example Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Chlamydia pneumonia,…
COVID-19 is an emergent viral infection which rose in December 2019 in a city in the Chinese province of Hubei, Wuhan; the viral aetiology of this infection is now known as COVID-19 virus, which belongs to the Betacoronavirus genus. This virus produces the syndrome of acute respiratory stress that h as been witnessed in other coronaviruses, such as that MERS-CoV in Middle East countries or SARS-CoV which was seen in 2002 and 2003 in China. This virus mediates its entry through its spike (S) proteins interacting with ACE2 receptors in lung epithelial cells, and may promote an inflammatory respo…
A new coronavirus disease, called COVID-19, appeared in the Chinese region of Wuhan at the end of last year; since then the virus spread to other countries, including most of Europe. We propose a differential equation governing the evolution of the COVID-19. This dynamic equation also describes the evolution of the number of infected people for 13 common respiratory viruses (including the SARS-CoV-2). We validate our theoretical predictions with experimental data for Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg, and compare them with the predictions of the logistic model. We find that our predictions are in …
In December 2019, a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has been identified to cause acute respiratory disease in humans. An outbreak of this disease has been reported in mainland China with the city of Wuhan as the recognized epicenter. The disease has also been exported to other countries, including the Philippines, but the level of spread is still under control (as of 08 February 2020). To describe and predict the dynamics of the disease, several preliminary mathematical models are formulated by various international study groups. Here, the insights that can be drawn from these models are discus…
The Coronavirus, also known as the COVID-19 virus, has emerged in Wuhan China since late November 2019. Since that time, it has been spreading at large-scale until today all around the world. It is currently recognized as the world's most viral and severe epidemic spread in the last twenty years, as compared to Ebola 2014, MERS 2012, and SARS 2003. Despite being still in the middle of the outbreak, there is an urgent need to understand the impact of COVID-19. The objective is to clarify how it was spread so fast in a short time worldwide in unprecedented fashion. This paper represents a first …
In late-2020, many countries around the world faced another surge in number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, including United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, United States, etc., which resulted in a large nationwide and even worldwide wave. While there have been indications that precaution fatigue could be a key factor, no scientific evidence has been provided so far. We used a stochastic metapopulation model with a hierarchical structure and fitted the model to the positive cases in the US from the start of outbreak to the end of 2020. We incorporated non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) into this…
COVID-19 is an emerging respiratory infectious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. It was first reported on in early December 2019 in Wuhan, China and within three month spread as a pandemic around the whole globe. Here, we study macro-epidemiological patterns along the time course of the pandemic. We compute the distribution of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths for countries worldwide and for counties in the US, and show that both distributions follow a truncated power-law over five orders of magnitude. We are able to explain the origin of this scaling behavior as a dual-scale pro…
Breaking a complex bio-social phenomenon (epidemic) into its components, considering the processes that determine its dynamics, formalizing the accepted hypotheses in mathematical equations, selecting appropriate experimental and statistical material, and constructing a mathematical model - those are typical tasks of scientific research. A specific data processing method (balanced identification) and appropriate information technology made it possible to consider a number of models, determine the general biological laws of the virus-human interaction (common to all populations), and the countr…
Since the start of the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there have been many modeling efforts to assess several issues of importance to public health. In this work, we review the theory behind some important mathematical models that have been used to answer questions raised by the development of the pandemic. We start revisiting the basic properties of simple Kermack-McKendrick type models. Then, we discuss extensions of such models and important epidemiological quantities applied to investigate the role of heterogeneity in disease transmission e.g. mixing functions and superspreading events, …
In this paper we explore a time-depended SEIR model, in which the dynamics of the infection in four groups from a selected target group (population), divided according to the infection, are modeled by a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Several basic parameters are involved in the model: coefficients of infection rate, incubation rate, recovery rate. The coefficients are adaptable to each specific infection, for each individual country, and depend on the measures to limit the spread of the infection and the effectiveness of the methods of treatment of the infected people in …
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a highly contagious respiratory disease that was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and has since spread around the globe, claiming more than 69,000 lives by the time this protocol is written. It has been widely acknowledged that the most effective public policy to mitigate the pandemic is \emph{social and physical distancing}: keeping at least six feet away from people, working from home, closing non-essential businesses, etc. There have been a lot of anecdotal evidences suggesting that social distancing has a causal effect on disease …
The world is still fighting against COVID-19, which has been lasting for more than a year. Till date, it has been a greatest challenge to human beings in fighting against COVID-19 since, the pathogen SARS-COV-2 that causes COVID-19 has significant biological and transmission characteristics when compared to SARS-COV and MERS-COV pathogens. In spite of many control strategies that are implemented to reduce the disease spread, there is a rise in the number of infected cases around the world. Hence, a mathematical model which can describe the real nature and impact of COVID-19 is necessary for th…
In this research, we study the propagation patterns of epidemic diseases such as the COVID-19 coronavirus, from a mathematical modeling perspective. The study is based on an extensions of the well-known susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) family of compartmental models. It is shown how social measures such as distancing, regional lockdowns, quarantine and global public health vigilance, influence the model parameters, which can eventually change the mortality rates and active contaminated cases over time, in the real world. As with all mathematical models, the predictive ability of the model …
This paper deals with the mathematical modeling and numerical simulations related to the coronavirus dynamics. A description is developed based on the framework of susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered model. Initially, a model verification is carried out calibrating system parameters with data from China, Italy, Iran and Brazil. Afterward, numerical simulations are performed to analyzed different scenarios of COVID-19 in Brazil. Results show the importance of governmental and individual actions to control the number and the period of the critical situations related to the pandemic.
It is well established that people with diabetes are more likely to have serious complications from COVID-19. Nearly 1 in 5 COVID-19 deaths in the African region are linked to diabetes. World Health Organization (WHO) finds that 18.3% of COVID-19 deaths in Africa are among people with diabetes. In this paper, we have formulated and analysed a mathematical comorbidity model of diabetes - COVID-19 of the deterministic type. The basic properties of the model were explored. The basic reproductive number, equilibrium points and stability of the equilibrium points were examined. Sensitivity analysis…
Studies have shown that some people with underlying conditions such as cancer, heart failure, diabetes and hypertension are more likely to get COVID-19 and have worse outcomes. In this paper, a fractional-order derivative is proposed to study the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 taking into consideration population having an underlying condition. The fractional derivative is defined in the Atangana Beleanu and Caputo (ABC) sense. For the proposed model, we find the basic reproductive number, the equilibrium points and determine the stability of these equilibrium points. The existence and the …
University of Cambridge(剑桥大学);UNC-Chapel Hill(北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校);UNC Gilling School of Global Public Health(北卡罗来纳大学吉林斯全球公共卫生学院);Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics(加拿大理论天体物理研究所);University of Toronto(多伦多大学);Canadian Institute for Advanced Research(加拿大高等研究院);California State University Fullerton(加州州立大学富勒顿分校);Oberlin College(欧柏林学院)
We present a new mathematical model to explicitly capture the effects that the three restriction measures: the lockdown date and duration, social distancing and masks, and, schools and border closing, have in controlling the spread of COVID-19 infections $i(r, t)$. Before restrictions were introduced, the random spread of infections as described by the SEIR model grew exponentially. The addition of control measures introduces a mixing of order and disorder in the system's evolution which fall under a different mathematical class of models that can eventually lead to critical phenomena. A gener…
Started in Wuhan, China, the COVID-19 has been spreading all over the world. We calibrate the logistic growth model, the generalized logistic growth model, the generalized Richards model and the generalized growth model to the reported number of infected cases for the whole of China, 29 provinces in China, and 33 countries and regions that have been or are undergoing major outbreaks. We dissect the development of the epidemics in China and the impact of the drastic control measures both at the aggregate level and within each province. We quantitatively document four phases of the outbreak in C…
The fatality rate of Covid-19 escalates with age and is larger in men than women. I show that these variations correlate strongly with the level of the viral receptor protein ACE2 in rat lungs, which is consistent with the still limited and apparently contradictory data on human ACE2. Surprisingly, lower levels of the receptor correlate with higher fatality. However, a previous mathematical model predicts that the speed of viral progression in the organism has a maximum and then declines with the receptor level. Moreover, many manifestations of severe CoViD-19, such as severe lung injury, exac…
The virus SARS-COV-2 caused disease COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by WHO. Currently, over 210 countries and territories have been affected. Careful, well-designed drugs and vaccine for the total elimination of this virus seem to be the need of the hour. In this context, the invivo mathematical modelling studies can be extremely helpful in understanding the efficacy of the drug interventions. These studies can also help understand the role of the crucial inflammatory mediators and the behaviour of immune response towards this novel coronavirus. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, w…
Contact Tracing (CT) is one of the measures taken by government and health officials to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. In this paper, we investigate its efficacy by developing a compartmental model for assessing its impact on mitigating the spread of the virus. We describe the impact on the reproduction number ${\mathcal{R}_0}$ of COVID-19. In particular, we discuss the importance and relevance of parameters of the model such as the number of reported cases, effectiveness of tracking and monitoring policy, and the transmission rates to contact tracing. We describe the terms "per…