Modeling, estimation, and analysis of COVID-19 secondary waves: The Case of the Italian Country

Scarabaggio, P.; Carli, R.; Cavone, G.; Epicoco, N.; Dotoli, M.

The recent trends of the COVID-19 research have been devoted to disease transmission modeling, with the aim of investigating the effects of different mitigation strategies mainly through scenario-based simulations. In this context we propose a novel non-linear time-varying model that effectively supports policy-makers in predicting and analyzing the dynamics of COVID-19 secondary waves. Specifically, this paper proposes an accurate SIRUCQTHE epidemiological model to get reliable predictions on the pandemic dynamics. Differently from the related literature, in the fitting phase, we make use of the google mobility reports to identify and predict the evolution of the infection rate. The effectiveness of the presented method is tested on the network of Italian regions. First, we describe the Italian epidemiological scenario in the COVID-19 second wave of contagions, showing the raw data available for the Italian scenario and discussing the main assumptions on the system parameters. Then, we present the different steps of the procedure used for the dynamical fitting of the SIRUCQTHE model. Finally, we compare the estimation results with the real data on the COVID-19 secondary waves in Italy. Provided the availability of reliable data to calibrate the model in heterogeneous scenarios, the proposed approach can be easily extended to cope with other scenarios. © 2021 IEEE.