SEIAR model with asymptomatic cohort and consequences to efficiency of quarantine government measures in COVID-19 epidemic

Pribylova, Lenka; Hajnova, Veronika

We present a compartmental SEIAR model of epidemic spread as a generalization of the SEIR model. We believe that the asymptomatic infectious cohort is an omitted part of the understanding of the epidemic dynamics of disease COVID-19. We introduce and derive the basic reproduction number as the weighted arithmetic mean of the basic reproduction numbers of the symptomatic and asymptomatic cohorts. Since the asymptomatic subjects people are not detected, they can spread the disease much longer, and this increases the COVID-19 $R_0$ up to around 9. We show that European epidemic outbreaks in various European countries correspond to the simulations with commonly used parameters based on clinical characteristics of the disease COVID-19, but $R_0$ is around three times bigger if the asymptomatic cohort is taken into account. Many voices in the academic world are drawing attention to the asymptomatic group of infectious subjects at present. We are convinced that the asymptomatic cohort plays a crucial role in the spread of the COVID-19 disease, and it has to be understood during government measures.