Extensions of the SEIR model for the analysis of tailored social distancing and tracing approaches to cope with COVID-19

  1. Veronika Grimm
  2. Friederike Mengel
  3. Martin Schmidt

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Abstract

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide face the challenge of designing tailored measures of epidemic control to provide reliable health protection while allowing societal and economic activity. In this paper, we propose an extension of the epidemiological SEIR model to enable a detailed analysis of commonly discussed tailored measures of epidemic control—among them group-specific protection and the use of tracing apps. We introduce groups into the SEIR model that may differ both in their underlying parameters as well as in their behavioral response to public health interventions. Moreover, we allow for different infectiousness parameters within and across groups, different asymptomatic, hospitalization, and lethality rates, as well as different take-up rates of tracing apps. We then examine predictions from these models for a variety of scenarios. Our results visualize the sharp trade-offs between different goals of epidemic control, namely a low death toll, avoiding overload of the health system, and a short duration of the epidemic. We show that a combination of tailored mechanisms, e.g., the protection of vulnerable groups together with a “trace & isolate” approach, can be effective in preventing a high death toll. Protection of vulnerable groups without further measures requires unrealistically strict isolation. A key insight is that high compliance is critical for the effectiveness of a “trace & isolate” approach. Our model allows to analyze the interplay of group-specific social distancing and tracing also beyond our case study in scenarios with a large number of groups reflecting, e.g., sectoral, regional, or age differentiation and group-specific behavioural responses.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-021-83540-2
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.24.20078113: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.24.20078113 on medRxiv