On predicting the novel COVID-19 human infections by using Infectious Disease modelling method in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu during 2020

Arsath Abbasali Ayubali; Sara Roshini Satheesh

On the one hand, since February 21, 2020, all the countries across the globe have been adopting strict isolation and precautionary measures, and on the other hand, Wuhan has closed all public transportation facilities, air travel, parks and almost a complete lock down since January 20, 2020. From the previous news articles and the managements reports, China's response to the epidemic can be seen in three stages: first stage is to control the primary source of infection and discard the transmission chains around all the areas in Hubei Province; second stage is to vigorously treat infected patients and reduce mortality; and the third stage is to control the epidemic condition, thoroughly contain the disease epidemic, and drastically reduce the contact ratio between human population. In this article, the path of the curve is simulated by a time-lapse modified SEIR model. The model prediction shows that without any governmental policies or control measures, the peak of infected human will reach about 25, 81, 190 when the average daily number of contacts per infected person is = 5. Therefore, it is recognised that the Tamil Nadu Government and the Ministry of Health takes strict control and precautionary measures from March 22, 2020. Hence, the number of people infected will be greatly reduced which is expected to be by the simulated model as 13, 24 and 470 of the total population of Tamil Nadu. Therefore, local government authorities and public health departments should emphasise their efforts on controlling the source of infection and delink the maximum possible transmission chains, such as increasing the sample number of testing which leads to the early detection of the infected person, screening of the latent humans which finds its way to early isolation, and early preparedness for treating the infected humans expected to come, to highly cut down the gathering of large groups of people, and to regularly and completely ban the use of public toilets and public utility areas. Importantly the policies are to me made in such a way that, it should strictly impose on the "Three Cs" -Closed and Crowded places and Conversations in close proximity to the public thereby creating a awareness to avoid the community transmission of the COVID-19.