Dynamic Modeling COVID-19 for Comparing Containment Strategies in a Pandemic Scenario

Since instances of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) community spread emerged in the United States, federal and local governments have implemented multiple containment measures. However, in order to satisfy the needs of citizens, the strictest containment measures can be only executed for short period. This article compares two types of containment strategies: a constant containment strategy that could satisfy the needs of citizens for a long period and an adaptive containment strategy whose strict level changes across time. When to implement the strictest measures is also of interest. A prediction model is proposed and a simple tool is developed for policy makers to compare different containment strategies. As an example, a county with 2.8 million populations with initial 200 infected cases is considered, where about 0.2% people dead during the pandemic. Compared with a constant containment strategy, adaptive containment strategies shorten the outbreak length, but executing the strictest measures late, even with stricter overall containment measures, will cause more mortality.

Keywords: Containment measures;; Incubation period; Infectious period; Pandemic; Period of communicability; Survival function.