Managing awareness can avoid hysteresis in disease spread: an application to Coronavirus Covid-19

Lacitignola, Deborah; Saccomandi, Giuseppe

A SEIR-type model is investigated to evaluate the effects of awareness campaigns in the presence of factors that can induce overexposure to disease. We find that high levels of overexposure can drive system dynamics towards a backward phenomenology and that increasing people awareness through balanced and aware information can be crucial to avoid dangerous dynamical transitions as hysteresis or transient oscillations before disease eradication. Investigations in the time dependent regimes are provided to support the results. Google Trends data in the context of Covid19 are also used to stress how low levels of awareness, combined with high overexposure, can be related to recent episodes of epidemic resurgence in Europe. Our results suggest that the interplay between overexposure and awareness is a point that should not be underestimated both in the current and future management of the Covid19 emergency.