COVID-19 pandemic: Analyzing of different pandemic control strategies using saturation models

Bracke, S.; Grams, L.

Since December 2019, the world is confronted with the outbreak of the respiratory disease COVID-19. At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic evolved into a pandemic, which continues to this day. Within many countries, several control strategies or combinations of them, like restrictions (e.g. lockdown actions), medical care (e.g. development of vaccine or medicaments) and medical prevention (e.g. hygiene concept), were established with the goal to control the pandemic. Depending on the chosen control strategy, the COVID-19 spreading behavior slowed down or approximately stopped for a defined time range. This phenomenon is called saturation effect and can be described by saturation models: E.g. a fundamental approach is Verhulst (1838). The model parameter allows the interpretation of the spreading speed (growth) and the saturation effect in a sound way. This paper shows results of a research study of the COVID-19 spreading behavior and saturation effects depending on different pandemic control strategies in different countries and time phases based on Johns Hopkins University data base (2020). The study contains the analyzing of saturation effects related to short time periods, e.g. possible caused by lockdown strategies, geographical influences and medical prevention activities. The research study is focusing on reference countries like Germany, Japan, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland and Israel.