Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19 and Impact on Public Health Policy

B Shayak; Mohit Manoj Sharma; Richard H Rand; Awadhesh Kumar Singh; Anoop Misra

For impactful epidemic management, societies need to model their strategies, develop an advanced surveillance system for early detection of cases, facilitate implementation of preventive interventions, and enable effective coordination of healthcare professionals, public health authorities, policy makers and government. Subsequent work will have to focus on extending and refining our model. For example, one can take into account the effects of errors in testing and intentional or unintentional violations of quarantine. According to the Institute of Medicine (IoM) categories, drivers of pathogen emergence like human demographics and behaviour, economic development and land use, international travel and commerce, changing ecosystems and human susceptibility should also be taken into consideration. One can also integrate our lumped-parameter model with more detailed analyses which account for heterogeneous spatial mixing and stochasticity in contracting the disease. Such steps will increase even more the predictive power of the model, and further help regional authorities in timing their lockdowns, and estimating the required capacities of quarantine and treatment facilities. * * * * *