Can medication mitigate the need for a strict lock down?: A mathematical study of control strategies for COVID-19 infection

  1. Mohsin Ali
  2. Mudassar Imran
  3. Adnan Khan

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Abstract

We formulate a deterministic epidemic model to study the effects of medication on the transmission dynamics of Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19). We are especially interested in how the availability of medication could change the necessary quarantine measures for effective control of the disease. We model the transmission by extending the SEIR model to include asymptomatic, quarantined, isolated and medicated population compartments. We calculate the basic reproduction number R 0 and show that for R 0 < 1 the disease dies out and for R 0 > 1 the disease is endemic. Using sensitivity analysis we establish that R 0 is most sensitive to the rates of quarantine and medication. We also study how the effectiveness and the rate of medication along with the quarantine rate affect R 0 . We devise optimal quarantine, medication and isolation strategies, noting that availability of medication reduces the duration and severity of the lock-down needed for effective disease control. Our study also reinforces the idea that with the availability of medication, while the severity of the lock downs can be eased over time some social distancing protocols need to be observed, at least till a vaccine is found. We also analyze the COVID-109 outbreak data for four different countries, in two of these, India and Pakistan the curve is still rising, and in he other two, Italy and Spain, the epidemic curve is now falling due to effective quarantine measures. We provide estimates of R 0 and the proportion of asymptomatic individuals in the population for these countries.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.29.20116749: (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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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.29.20116749v1 on medRxiv