SimCOVID: An Open-Source Simulink-Based Program for Simulating the COVID-19 Epidemic

Ismael Khorshed Abdulrahman

A new Simulink program was developed for this model and is shown in Fig. 6 . Note that the actual collected data was used as input to this model. This data is stored in Excel sheets and there is a block in Simulink that allows us to import data from external sources and build a customized signal. The name of the block is "signal builder". The ratio between the daily dead and daily infectious is used to represent the mortality rate. This signal represents an actual data-based signal which is multiplied by the simulated infectious signal to be integrated and form the cumulative dead variable using an integrator block in Simulink. In the figure, orange color is used for "Exposed" and dark red is used for "Dead" compartments. Using the same initial values used for the SIR model, the model gives similar results comparing to the standard model but with two new variables, the exposed and mortality cases. The parameter optimization process and the numerical outputs are not plotted here owing to its similarity to the above model and for space limitation reasons. However, all these models and programs are provided with this paper.