Modeling the COVID-19 transmission in Italy: The roles of asymptomatic cases, social distancing, and lockdowns

Khairulbahri, M.

The SEIR model of COVID-19 is developed based on the system dynamics approach. Compared with existing models, the model successfully reproduces similar multiple observed outputs such as infected and recovered patients in Italy by July 2020. In doing so, the system dynamics model captures the roles of undocumented cases on the Italian COVID-19 flow. The model also considers two types of measures including behavioral measures and lockdown measures as they are embedded in the model. It is hoped that the model can enhance our understanding of the roles of undocumented cases, so-called asymptomatic cases, and the efficacy of two different policies on the COVID-19 flow. This study concludes that the first policy is important once the number of infected cases is relatively low. However, once the number of infected cases is very high so the society cannot identify infected and disinfected people, the second policy must be applied soon. It is thus this study suggests that relaxed lockdowns lead the second wave of the COVID-19 around the world.