A Noncooperative Game Analysis for Controlling COVID-19 Outbreak

Bairagi, A. K.; Masud, M.; Kim, D. H.; Munir, M. S.; Nahid, A. A.; Abedin, S. F.; Alam, K. M.; Biswas, S.; Alshamrani, S. S.; Han, Z.; Hong, C. S.

COVID-19 is a global epidemic. Till now, there is no remedy for this epidemic. However, isolation and social distancing are seemed to be effective to control this pandemic. In this paper, we provide an analytical model on the effectiveness of the sustainable lockdown policy that accommodates both isolation and social distancing features of the individuals. To promote social distancing, we analyze a noncooperative game environment that provides an incentive for maintaining social distancing. Furthermore, the sustainability of the lockdown policy is also interpreted with the help of a game-theoretic incentive model for maintaining social distancing. Finally, an extensive numerical analysis is provided to study the impact of maintaining a social-distancing measure to prevent the Covid-19 outbreak. Numerical results show that the individual incentive increases more than 85% with an increasing percentage of home isolation from 25% to 100% for all considered scenarios. The numerical results also demonstrate that in a particular percentage of home isolation, the individual incentive decreases with an increasing number of individuals.