Research on the Influence of Information Diffusion on the Transmission of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Lin Shanlang; Ma Chao; Lin Ruofei; Huang Junpei; Xu Ruohan; Yuan Aini

In the current literature, models of disease transmission and behavioral spread have been developed for decades, all are based on human networks ((Deffuant, Huet & Amblard, 2005; Keeling & Eames, 2005) . However, few people committed to combining information diffusion and human behavior, considering these two interactive processes. In fact, when a disease-related information spreads among people, people will naturally take some precautionary measures to counteract it, which in turn limits the spread of the disease. In order to study the impact of information diffusion on epidemic outbreaks, this paper draws on the conceptual framework of Mao & Yang (2012) to develop a model of the interaction between disease and information. We divided the population into two categories according to their health status: the susceptible (S) and the (I); according to the level of information obtained, they were divided into two categories: conscious (+) and unconscious (-). Therefore, the population in the entire society can be divided into four states: (1) S−: unconscious susceptible; (2) S +: conscious susceptible; (3) I−: unconscious infected; (4) I +: conscious infected. As shown in the figure 5, the transmission process of COVID-19 including the information diffusion is proposed. The entire propagation process of the model is described as follows: the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.