The Richards family models comprise a well-known set of models with useful parameters to describe several aspects of disease outbreaks. Some of these models have been used to study the current Covid-19 pandemic. However, there seems to be confusion regarding the discrimination among competing models. In this paper a detailed application of Akaikes information approach is used to discern among models using data from The European Union, The United States and The United Kingdom. We argue that the epidemiological characteristics derived from competing models should be examined to complement the selection strategy, and the implicit properties of the models contrasted with the available data. Detailed analytical expressions of the epidemiological characteristics implied by the selected parametrizations are also offered.
From March 23rd, the data for the recovered cases of COVID-19 are missing from the standard repository maintained by the Johns Hopkins University in collaboration with the WHO. But since data concerning recovered patients are extremely important for modelling the COVID-19 outbreak, a method for estimating the missing data is provided and tested. As a byproduct, it produces estimates for the probabilities to die $k$ days after confirmation, or to survive after $d$ days.
We present Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) statistics in China dataset: daily statistics of the COVID-19 outbreak in China at the city/county level. For each city/country, we include the six most important numbers for epidemic research: daily new infections, accumulated infections, daily new recoveries, accumulated recoveries, daily new deaths, and accumulated deaths. We cross validate the dataset and the estimate error rate is about 0.04%. We then give several examples to show how to trace the spreading in particular cities or provinces, and also contrast the development of COVID-19 in al…
In the wake of the COVID-19 virus outbreak, a brief phenomenological (descriptive, comparative) analysis of the dynamics of the disease spread among different countries is presented. Results indicate that the infection spread dynamics is currently the most pronounced in the USA (confirmed cases are currently doubling every 2.16 days, with a decreasing doubling time tendency), while other countries with the most confirmed cases show different values, and tendencies. The reported number of deaths is currently doubled every 2.28 days in Germany, 2.56 days in France, 2.57 days in Switzerland, 2.59…
By using the public data from Jan. 20 to Feb. 11, 2020, we perform data-driven analysis and forecasting on the COVID-19 epidemic in mainland China, especially Hubei province. Our results show that the turning points of the daily infections are predicted to be Feb. 6 and Feb. 1, 2020, for Hubei and China other than Hubei, respectively. The epidemic in China is predicted to end up after Mar. 10, 2020, and the number of the total infections are predicted to be 51600. The data trends reveal that quick and active strategies taken by China to reduce human exposure have already had a good impact on t…
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.
We comparatively analyzed the spatiotemporal fluctuations of the 2019-novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and SARS outbreaks to understand their epidemiological characteristics. Methodologically, we introduced TPL (Taylor power law) to characterize their spatiotemporal heterogeneity/stability and Hubbell (2001) unified neutral theory of biodiversity (UNTB) [specifically Harris et al. (2015) HDP-MSN model (hierarchical Dirichlet process multi-site neutral model)] to approximate the metapopulation of coronavirus infections. First, TPL analysis suggested that the coronaviruses appear to have a specific …
The paper deals with a modeling of the ongoing epidemic caused by Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the closed territory of the Republic of Croatia. Using the official public information on the number of confirmed infected, recovered and deceased individuals, the modified SEIR compartmental model is developed to describe the underlying dynamics of the epidemic. Fitted modified SEIR model provides the prediction of the disease progression in the near future, considering strict control interventions by means of social distancing and quarantine for infected and at-risk individuals introduced…
Since the beginning of March 2020, the cumulative numbers of cases of infection with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in Germany have been reported on a daily basis. The reports originate from national laws, according to which positive test findings must be submitted to the Federal Health Authorities, the Robert Koch Institute, via the local health authorities. Since an enormous number of unreported cases can be expected, the question of how widespread the disease has been in the population cannot be answered based on these administrative reports. Using mathematical modeling, however, estimate…
The initial surge of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Guatemala on March 2020. On a country scale, the epidemic has undergone a fairly well-known and distinguishable initial phase, reaching its peak on mid July 2020. However, the detailed picture is more involved and reflects inter-regional variations in the epidemic dynamics, presumably grounded on socio-demographic, connectivity, and human mobility factors. Classifying the regional epidemic curves and identifying the major hubs of regional COVID-19 spread can contribute towards defining an evidence-based risk map for future outbreaks of infectious …
COVID-19 outbreaks have proven to be very difficult to isolate and extinguish before they spread out. An important reason behind this might be that epidemiological barriers consisting in stopping symptomatic people are likely to fail because of the contagion time before onset, mild cases and/or asymptomatics carriers. Motivated by these special COVID-19 features, we study a scheme for containing an outbreak in a city that consists in adding an extra firewall block between the outbreak and the rest of the city. We implement a coupled compartment model with stochastic noise to simulate a localiz…
Some ideas are presented about the physical motivation of the apparent capacity of generalized logistic equations to describe the outbreak of the COVID-19 infection, and in general of quite many other epidemics. The main focuses here are: the complex, possibly fractal, structure of the locus describing the "contagion event set"; what can be learnt from the models of trophic webs with "herd behaviour".
Novel coronavirus-19 (2019-nCoV or COVID-19) is by far the most dangerous coronavirus ever identified for the third time in the three decades capable of infecting not only the animals but also the humans across the globe. Nearly 6000 deaths have been recorded due mainly to COVID-19 outbreak worldwide and more than 50% of these deaths appeared to have evolved from China where the virus was thought to originate. The endemicity of COVID-19 dramatically surpassed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that were so far di…
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…
The COVID-19 pandemic poses challenges for continuing economic activity while reducing health risks. While these challenges can be mitigated through testing, testing budget is often limited. Here we study how institutions, such as nursing homes, should utilize a fixed test budget for early detection of an outbreak. Using an extended network-SEIR model, we show that given a certain budget of tests, it is generally better to test smaller subgroups of the population frequently than to test larger groups but less frequently. The numerical results are consistent with an analytical expression we der…
We discuss the generation of various reproduction ratios or numbers that are very useful to monitor an ongoing epidemic like Covid-19 and examine the effects of intervention measures. A detailed SEIR algorithm is described for their computation, with applications given to the current Covid-19 outbreaks in a number of countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, UK and USA). The corresponding matlab script, complete and ready to use, is provided for free downloading.
Intent of this research is to explore how mathematical models, specifically Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model, can be utilized to forecast peak outbreak timeline of COVID-19 epidemic amongst a population of interest starting from the date of first reported case. Till the time of this research, there was no effective and universally accepted vaccine to control transmission and spread of this infection. COVID-19 primarily spreads in population through respiratory droplets from an infected person cough and sneeze which infects people who are in proximity. COVID-19 is spreading contagiously…
The Covid-19 outbreak of 2020 has required many governments to develop mathematical-statistical models of the outbreak for policy and planning purposes. This work provides a tutorial on building a compartmental model using Susceptibles, Exposed, Infected, Recovered and Deaths status through time. A Bayesian Framework is utilized to perform both parameter estimation and predictions. This model uses interventions to quantify the impact of various government attempts to slow the spread of the virus. Predictions are also made to determine when the peak Active Infections will occur.
Recent literature has suggested that climate conditions have considerably significant influences on the transmission of coronavirus COVID-19. However, there is a lack of comprehensive study that investigates the relationships between multiple weather factors and the development of COVID-19 pandemic while excluding the impact of social factors. In this paper, we study the relationships between six main weather factors and the infection statistics of COVID-19 on 250 cities in Mainland China. Our correlation analysis using weather and infection statistics indicates that all the studied weather fa…
COVID-19 pandemic has become a major threat to the country. Till date, well tested medication or antidote is not available to cure this disease. According to WHO reports, COVID-19 is a severe acute respiratory syndrome which is transmitted through respiratory droplets and contact routes. Analysis of this disease requires major attention by the Government to take necessary steps in reducing the effect of this global pandemic. In this study, outbreak of this disease has been analysed for India till 30th March 2020 and predictions have been made for the number of cases for the next 2 weeks. SEIR …
The COVID-19 disease has forced countries to make a considerable collaborative effort between scientists and governments to provide indicators to suitable follow-up the pandemic's consequences. Mathematical modeling plays a crucial role in quantifying indicators describing diverse aspects of the pandemic. Consequently, this work aims to develop a clear, efficient, and reproducible methodology for parameter optimization, whose implementation is illustrated using data from three representative regions from Chile and a suitable generalized SIR model together with a fitted positivity rate. Our res…
The current COVID-19 pandemic is having detrimental consequences worldwide. The pandemic started to develop strongly by the end of January and beginning of February 2020, first in China with subsequent rapid spread to other countries with new epicenters of the outbreaks concentrated mainly within the 30-50 degrees North latitudinal band (e.g., South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy, Spain). Simultaneously, an unusual persistent anticyclonic situation prevailing at latitudes around 40 degrees North was observed on global scale, in line with an anomalously strong positive phase of the Arctic Oscillatio…
We present a compartmental SEIRD model aimed at forecasting hospital occupancy in metropolitan areas during the current COVID-19 outbreak. The model features asymptomatic and symptomatic infections with detailed hospital dynamics. We model explicitly branching probabilities and non exponential residence times in each latent and infected compartments. Using both hospital admittance confirmed cases and deaths we infer the contact rate and the initial conditions of the dynamical system, considering break points to model lockdown interventions. Our Bayesian approach allows us to produce timely pro…
We present a compartmental mathematical model with demography for the spread of the COVID-19 disease, considering also asymptomatic infectious individuals. We compute the basic reproductive ratio of the model and study the local and global stability for it. We solve the model numerically based on the case of Italy. We propose a vaccination model and we derive threshold conditions for preventing infection spread in the case of imperfect vaccines.
In the night of February 20, 2020, the first case of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was confirmed in the Lombardy Region, Italy. In the week that followed, Lombardy experienced a very rapid increase in the number of cases. We analyzed the first 5,830 laboratory-confirmed cases to provide the first epidemiological characterization of a COVID-19 outbreak in a Western Country. Epidemiological data were collected through standardized interviews of confirmed cases and their close contacts. We collected demographic backgrounds, dates of symptom onset, clinical features, respiratory tract speci…
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 …
Background: The ongoing COVID-19 epidemic dilated rapidly throughout India. To end the global COVID-19 pandemic major behavioral, social distancing, contact tracing, and state interventions has been undertaken to reduce the outbreak and avert the persistence of the coronavirus in humans in India and worldwide. In absence of any vaccine or therapeutics, forecasting is of utmost priority for health care planning and control the transmission of COVID-19. Methods: We have proposed a mathematical model that explain the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in India. Based on the estimated data our mode…
The current outbreak is known as Coronavirus Disease or COVID-19 caused by the virus SAR-COV-2 which continues to wreak havoc across the globe. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. In Pakistan, the spread of the virus is on the rise with the number of infected people and causalities rapidly increasing. In the absence of proper vaccination and treatment, to reduce the number of infections and casualties, the only option so far is to educate people regarding preventive measures and to enforce countrywide lock-down. Any …
The current outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses an unprecedented global health and economic threat to interconnected human societies. Until a vaccine is developed, strategies for controlling the outbreak rely on aggressive social distancing. These measures largely disconnect the social network fabric of human societies, especially in urban areas. Here, we estimate the growth rates and reproductive numbers of COVID-19 in US cities from March 14th through March 19th to reveal a power-law scaling relationship to city population size. This means that COVID-19 is spreading f…
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…
I employ a simple mathematical model of an epidemic process to evaluate how four basic quantities: the reproduction number (R), the numbers of sensitive (S) and infectious individuals(I), and total community size (N) affect strategies to control COVID-19. Numerical simulations show that strict suppression measures at the beginning of an epidemic can create low infectious numbers, which thereafter can be managed by mitigation measures over longer periods to flatten the epidemic curve. The stronger the suppression measure, the faster it achieves the low numbers of infections that are conducive t…
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had caused more that 8 million infections as of middle June 2020. Recently, Brazil has become a new epicentre of COVID-19, while India and African region are potential epicentres. This study aims to predict the inflection point and outbreak size of these new/potential epicentres at the early phase of the epidemics by borrowing information from more `mature' curves from other countries. We modeled the cumulative cases to the well-known sigmoid growth curves to describe the epidemic trends under the mixed-effect models and using the four-parameter logistic…
There are several reports in India that indicate hospitals and quarantined centers are COVID-19 hotspots. In the absence of efficient contact tracing tools, Govt. and the policymakers may not be paying attention to the risk of hospital-based transmission. To explore more on this important route and its possible impact on lockdown effect, we developed a mechanistic model with hospital-based transmission. Using daily notified COVID-19 cases from six states (Maharashtra, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh) and overall India, we estimated several important parameters of t…
Motivated by the rapid spread of COVID-19 all across the globe, we have performed simulations of a system dynamic epidemic spread model in different possible situations. The simulation, not only captures the model dynamic of the spread of the virus, but also, takes care of population and mobility data. The model is calibrated based on epidemic data and events specifically of Pakistan, which can easily be generalized. The simulation results are quite disturbing, indicating that, even with stringent social distancing and testing strategies and for a quite long time (even beyond one year), the sp…
The recent outbreak of COVID-19 in Mainland China is characterized by a distinctive algebraic, sub-exponential increase of confirmed cases during the early phase of the epidemic, contrasting an initial exponential growth expected for an unconstrained outbreak with sufficiently large reproduction rate. Although case counts vary significantly between affected provinces in Mainland China, the scaling law $t^μ$ is surprisingly universal, with a range of exponents $μ=2.1\pm0.3$. The universality of this behavior indicates that despite social, regional, demographical, geographical, and socio-economi…
As the outbreak of COVID-19 enters its third year, we have now enough data to analyse the behavior of the pandemic with mathematical models over a long period of time. The pandemic alternates periods of high and low infections, in a way that sheds a light on the nature of mathematical model that can be used for reliable predictions. The main hypothesis of the model presented here is that the oscillatory behavior is a structural feature of the outbreak, even without postulating a time-dependence of the coefficients. As such, it should be reflected by the presence of limit cycles as asymptotic s…
The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and resulting COVID-19 disease have had an unprecedented spread and continue to cause an increasing number of fatalities worldwide. While vaccines are still under development, social distancing, extensive testing, and quarantining of confirmed infected subjects remain the most effective measures to contain the pandemic. These measures carry a significant socioeconomic cost. In this work, we introduce a novel optimization-based decision-making framework for managing the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. This includes modeling the dynamics of affected populations, est…
We illustrate and study the evolution of reported infections over the month from March 1st to April 1st in the New York State as a whole, as well as in each individual county. We search for exponential trends, and try to understand whether there is any correlation of the timing and dynamics of these trends with state mandated measures on social distancing and testing. We conclude that the reports on April 1st may be dramatically under-representing the actual number of state-wide infections, and we propose reassessment of the data over the coming weeks, to monitor for effects of the PAUSE direc…
In this study, we use US county-level COVID-19 case data from January 21-March 25, 2020 to study the exponential behavior of case growth at the metropolitan scale. In particular, we assume that all localized outbreaks are in an early stage (either undergoing exponential growth in the number of cases, or are effectively contained) and compare the explanatory performance of different simple exponential and linear growth models for different metropolitan areas. While we find no relationship between city size and exponential growth rate (directly related to $R0$, which denotes average the number o…
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 …
In this paper, we introduce a novel modeling framework for incorporating fear of infection and frustration with social distancing into disease dynamics. We show that the resulting SEIR behavior-perception model has three principal modes of qualitative behavior---no outbreak, controlled outbreak, and uncontrolled outbreak. We also demonstrate that the model can produce transient and sustained waves of infection consistent with secondary outbreaks. We fit the model to cumulative COVID-19 case and mortality data from several regions. Our analysis suggests that regions which experience a significa…
We use daily data from Lombardy, the Italian region most affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, to calibrate a SIR model individually on each municipality. These are all covered by the same health system and, in the post-lockdown phase we focus on, all subject to the same social distancing regulations. We find that municipalities with a higher number of cases at the beginning of the period analyzed have a lower rate of diffusion, which cannot be imputed to herd immunity. In particular, there is a robust and strongly significant negative correlation between the estimated basic reproduction number (…
The COVID-19 pandemic has, worldwide and up to December 2020, caused over 1.7 million deaths, and put the world's most advanced healthcare systems under heavy stress. In many countries, drastic restrictive measures adopted by political authorities, such as national lockdowns, have not prevented the outbreak of new pandemic's waves. In this article, we propose an integrated detection-estimation-forecasting framework that, using publicly available data, is designed to: (i) learn relevant features of the pandemic (e.g., the infection rate); (ii) detect as quickly as possible the onset (or the ter…
The new coronavirus covid-19 has spread very quickly worldwide, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a state of pandemic. One of the questions many policy makers, and governments are asking themselves is how the spread is going to evolve in time. In this study, I applied an adapted SIR model previously used in South Korea to model the MERS outbreak, which is also caused by a coronavirus, to estimate the evolution of the curve of active cases in the case of the Portuguese situation, using Italian dara. I then construct five different scenarios for the evolution of covid-19 in …
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…
Infectious disease transmission dynamics are particularly sensitive to social contact patterns, and the precautions people take to limit disease transmission. It depends on the age distribution of the community. Thus, knowing the age$-$specific prevalence and incidence of infectious diseases is critical for predicting future disease burden and the efficacy of interventions like immunization. This study uses an SEIR age$-$structured multi-group epidemic model to understand how social contact affects disease control. We created location$-$specific social contact matrices in the community to see …
Boston Children’s Hospital（波士顿儿童医院）；Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院）；Tecnológico de Monterrey（蒙特雷理工学院）；Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health（哈佛大学陈曾熙公共卫生学院）；Northeastern University（东北大学）；ISI Foundation（ISI基金会）
We present a timely and novel methodology that combines disease estimates from mechanistic models with digital traces, via interpretable machine-learning methodologies, to reliably forecast COVID-19 activity in Chinese provinces in real-time. Specifically, our method is able to produce stable and accurate forecasts 2 days ahead of current time, and uses as inputs (a) official health reports from Chinese Center Disease for Control and Prevention (China CDC), (b) COVID-19-related internet search activity from Baidu, (c) news media activity reported by Media Cloud, and (d) daily forecasts of COVI…
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 …
This manuscript proposes a model of $n$ distinct populations interaction structured SEIR to describe the spread of COVID-19 pandemic diseases. The proposed model has the flexibility to include geographically separated communities as well as taking into account aging population groups and their interactions. We show that distinct assumptions on the dynamics of the proposed model lead to a plateau-like curve of the infected population, reflecting collected data from large countries like Brazil. Such observations aim to the following conjecture: " Covid-19 diseased diffusion from the capitals to …
Understanding influencing factors is essential for the surveillance and prevention of infectious diseases, and the factors are likely to vary spatially and temporally as the disease progresses. Taking daily cases and deaths data during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the U.S. as a case study, we develop a mobility-augmented geographically and temporally weighted regression (M-GTWR) model to quantify the spatiotemporal impacts of social-demographic factors and human activities on the COVID-19 dynamics. Different from the base GTWR model, we incorporate a mobility-adjusted di…
In individual SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, the count of confirmed cases and deaths follow a Gompertz growth function for locations of very different sizes. This lack of dependence on region size leads us to hypothesize that virus spread depends on universal properties of the network of social interactions. We test this hypothesis by simulating the propagation of a virus on networks of different topologies. Our main finding is that Gompertz growth observed for early outbreaks occurs only for a scale-free network, in which nodes with many more neighbors than average are common. These nodes that have ve…
International Center for Advanced Studies (ICAS)（国际高级研究中心（ICAS））；ICIFI-CONICET；ECyT-UNSAM；Ministerio de Salud de la Provincia de Buenos Aires（布宜诺斯艾利斯省卫生部）
One of the main problems in controlling COVID-19 epidemic spread is the delay in confirming cases. Having information on changes in the epidemic evolution or outbreaks rise before lab-confirmation is crucial in decision making for Public Health policies. We present an algorithm to estimate on-stream the number of COVID-19 cases using the data from telephone calls to a COVID-line. By modeling the calls as background (proportional to population) plus signal (proportional to infected), we fit the calls in Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina) with coefficient of determination $R^2 > 0.85$. This re…
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…
Background: Early detection and isolation of COVID-19 patients are essential for successful implementation of mitigation strategies and eventually curbing the disease spread. With a limited number of daily COVID-19 tests performed in every country, simulating the COVID-19 spread along with the potential effect of each mitigation strategy currently remains one of the most effective ways in managing the healthcare system and guiding policy-makers. Methods: We introduce COVIDHunter, a flexible and accurate COVID-19 outbreak simulation model that evaluates the current mitigation measures that are …
We discovered that the time evolution of the inverse fractional daily growth of new infections, N/dN, in the current outbreak of COVID-19 is accurately described by a universal function, namely the two-parameter Gumbel cumulative function, in all countries that we have investigated. While the two Gumbel parameters, as determined bit fits to the data, vary from country to country (and even within different regions of the same country), reflecting the diversity and efficacy of the adopted containment measures, the functional form of the evolution of N/dN appears to be universal. The result of th…
We propose a novel data-driven framework for assessing the a-priori epidemic risk of a geographical area and for identifying high-risk areas within a country. Our risk index is evaluated as a function of three different components: the hazard of the disease, the exposure of the area and the vulnerability of its inhabitants. As an application, we discuss the case of COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. We characterize each of the twenty Italian regions by using available historical data on air pollution, human mobility, winter temperature, housing concentration, health care density, population size and …
In the absence of other tools, monitoring the effects of protective measures, including social distancing and forecasting the outcome of outbreaks is of immense interest. Real-time data is noisy and very often hampered by systematic errors in reporting. Detailed epidemic models may contain a large number of empirical parameters, which cannot be determined with sufficient accuracy. In this paper, we show that the cumulative number of deaths can be regarded as a master variable, and the parameters of the epidemic such as the basic reproduction number, the size of the susceptible population, and …
Risk mapping for COVID-19 outbreaks in Australia using mobility data
The University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学）；The University of Adelaide（阿德莱德大学）；Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, Government of Victoria（维多利亚州卫生与人类服务部）；Department of Infectious Diseases, The Alfred and Central Clinical School, Monash University（蒙纳士大学阿尔弗雷德医院与中央临床学院传染病系）；University of New South Wales（新南威尔士大学）；Melbourne School of Engineering（墨尔本工程学院）；The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and The University of Melbourne（彼得·多赫蒂感染与免疫研究所、皇家墨尔本医院和墨尔本大学）
Heidelberg University（海德堡大学）；Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College（中国医学科学院与北京协和医学院）；University Hospital Bonn（波恩大学医院）；University Hospital Heidelberg（海德堡大学医院）；Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health（哈佛大学陈曾熙公共卫生学院）；Africa Health Research Institute（非洲健康研究所）
Mathematical models in epidemiology are an indispensable tool to determine the dynamics and important characteristics of infectious diseases. Apart from their scientific merit, these models are often used to inform political decisions and intervention measures during an ongoing outbreak. However, reliably inferring the dynamics of ongoing outbreaks by connecting complex models to real data is still hard and requires either laborious manual parameter fitting or expensive optimization methods which have to be repeated from scratch for every application of a given model. In this work, we address …
