Dynamic Modeling to Identify Mitigation Strategies for Covid-19 Pandemic

Patrick Jenny; David F Jenny; Hossein Gorji; Markus Arnoldini; Wolf-Dietrich Hardt

While more and more affected populations are moving from containment towards risk mitigation plans for Covid-19, it is important to understand the engaged mechanisms underlying this pandemic-spread. Outcomes of social distancing : social distancing phase with 70% lower infection rate (50 to 100 days) followed by one year of high frequency testing with a 1.7666 times higher detection rate. Dashed lines represent the immune (n s,init − n s (t)), dash-dotted lines the infected (n i|u + n i|d ) and solid lines the deceased (n k ) population; on the top with linear and in the middle with logarithmic scaling. In the bottom logarithmic plots the detected infected population (dotted lines) is shown together with the intensive care unit capacity (horizontal long dashed lines). The values are in % of the initial susceptible population size and are plotted over number of days. The light and dark gray shadings marks the "social distancing" and "more frequent testing" phases, respectively. 15 All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. and mass testing are investigated in this paper. It is found that the latter can significantly reduce the percentage of people getting infected and the death toll. It is important to emphasize here that more testing has to be applied to individuals without symptoms, since those with symptoms contain themselves automatically in most cases. As improved testing capacities are built up, our approach may help to decide when alternative mitigation methods may not only complement, but eventually replace the current social distancing regime. This may help to minimize the socio-economical impacts resulting from severe social isolation policies. While social distancing is currently essential, it is of utmost importance that the testing capabilities are upgraded such that they cover large portions of affected populations in the near future.