Time-variant strategies for optimizing the performance of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in protecting lives and livelihoods during the COVID-19 pandemic

Wei Aun Yap; Dhesi Baha Raja

Smooth, submaximal lockdowns are more effective than pulsatile lockdowns, in terms of epidemiological outcomes and non-epidemiological outcomes. In terms of epidemiological outcomes, the best performing scenario (E3 or E4) is a smooth and constant partial lockdown applied throughout the intervention period. For any given duty cycle (the fraction of one period that a pulsatile lockdown is in force), the equivalent smooth partial lockdown was superior (also see Kissler et al. 2020) . A potential caveat to this would be if certain social or economic activities price 6 It is highly probable, that a scenario involving a prolonged full lockdown to suppress COVID-19 for most of the duration of the simulation would prevent such infections, but this 'path one' strategy (suppress and eliminate local transmission), although perfectly valid, is not the focus of this paper.