Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 containment strategies with considerations for limited medical resources

Brydon Eastman; Cameron Meaney; Michelle Przedborski; Mohammad Kohandel

prepared immune response and will never catch the virus again. Finally, the "deceased" class represents the cumulative number of fatalities as a result of COVID-19 disease. Note that some individuals may never leave the susceptible compartment during an entire pandemic outbreak (representing people who do not contract the virus during an outbreak). However, once someone enters the exposed compartment, they will irreversibly progress through the infected compartment before ending as either recovered or deceased. The second model we consider is a proposed model of social distancing combined with SEIRD dynamics (details in the Supplementary Information, Section A) as illustrated in Figure 2 . This model is an extension of the SEIRD model described above which we refer to as the Distancing-SEIRD model. To incorporate social distancing, we further split the susceptible, exposed, and infected compartments into two types: distancers and mixers. Distancers represent people who are following social distancing protocols. As a result, susceptible distancers have less contact with infectious individuals and are less likely to become sick themselves. Furthermore, infectious distancers are less likely to pass the virus on to someone else as a result of their lower contact rate. Conversely, mixers are more likely to contract and spread the infection as a result of their increased motility.