Optimal control of vaccination and plasma transfusion with potential usefulness for COVID-19

Couras, Juliana; Area, Ivan; Nieto, Juan J.; Silva, Cristiana J.; Torres, Delfim F. M.

The SEIR model is a compartmental model used to simulate the dynamics of an epidemic. In this chapter, we introduce two control functions in the compartmental SEIR model representing vaccination and plasma transfusion. Optimal control problems are proposed to study the effects of these two control measures, on the reduction of infected individuals and increase of recovered ones, with minimal costs. Up to our knowledge, the plasma transfusion treatment has never been considered as a control strategy for epidemics mitigation. The proposed vaccination and treatment strategies may have a real application in the challenging and hard problem of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.