Optimal timing for social distancing during an epidemic

Oscar Patterson-Lomba

The goal of this paper is to study how to efficiently time temporal social distancing measures, and investigate how the optimal time to implement a social distancing intervention depends on i) disease transmissibility, ii) the length of the social distancing, iii) its effectiveness in reducing transmissibility, and iv) when will other (pharmacological) interventions will be available. We define"optimal" based on three different epidemiologically relevant criteria: optimal timing of social distancing 1) to minimize the final size of the epidemic; 2) to maximize the delay in the peak of the infection incidence curve of the epidemic; and 3) to minimize the peak of the infection incidence curve of the epidemic. The first criteria aims to minimize the impact of the epidemic in terms of overall infections, while the other two refer to the flattening of the epidemic as to not overburden the health system in place to care for infected individuals.