Impact of control strategies on COVID-19 pandemic and the SIR model based forecasting in Bangladesh.

Rahman, Mohammad Mahmudur; Ahmed, Asif; Hossain, Khondoker Moazzem; Haque, Tasnima; Hossain, Md. Anwar

COVID-19 is transmitting worldwide drastically and infected nearly two and half million of people sofar. Till date 2144 cases of COVID-19 is confirmed in Bangladesh till 18th April though the stage-3/4 transmission is not validated yet. To project the final infection numbers in Bangladesh we used the SIR mathematical model. We also tried to demonstrate the impact of control strategies like social distancing on the COVID-19 transmission. Due to large population and socio-economic characteristics, we assumed 60% social distancing and lockdown can be possible. Assuming that, the predicated final size of infections will be 3782558 on the 92th day from the first infections. To estimate the impact of social distancing we assumed eight different scenarios, the predicted results confirmed the positive impact of this type of control strategies suggesting that by strict social distancing and lockdown, COVID-19 infection can be under control and then the infection cases will steadily decrease down to zero.