The Easter and Passover Blip in New York City

Maximilian Vierlboeck; Roshanak R Nilchiani; Christine M Edwards

The second scenario, as above alluded to, will evaluate the effects of gradually reduced effective contact rates over a number of days. This way, the rates decrease over time until they reach certain events or a limit, which is more realistic since people adjust to new circumstances and in this case regulations gradually over time. Thus, the starting point of the regulations mentioned in the previous scenario was used to introduce effective contact rate reductions with a delay of one day. For example, the blue line in Figure 4 indicates a reduction of 1 for the effective contact rate after day 16 for 9 consecutive days until the rate reaches 1.325. With this data, we can see that the run with the steps of 0.5 down to 1.825 is closest to reality and approaches the fatality number currently reported. Furthermore, we see that the gradual reduction of the effective contact rate leads to a peak in the infection rate which then introduces a downswing and successive upswing albeit the latter with a lower gradient of the Infection Rate over time. Therefore, we can say that the gradual reduction of the effective contact rate is an effective measure to control the epidemic and can even hedge the upswing of the virus spread, as shown by Figure 4 .