COVID-19 Outbreak: Model-Driven Impact Analysis Comparing Oman and Pakistan
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Abstract
Motivated by the rapid spread of COVID-19 all across the globe, we haveperformed simulations of a system dynamic epidemic spread model in differentpossible situations. The simulation, not only captures the model dynamic of thespread of the virus, but also, takes care of population and mobility data. Themodel is calibrated based on epidemic data and events as they happened. Thesimulation results are quite disturbing, indicating that, during a process of stringent social distancing and testing strategies, a small perturbation can lead toquite undesirable outcomes. The simulation results, although consistent in expected outcomes across changing parameters’ values, also indicate a substantialmismatch with real numbers. An analysis of what can be the reason of this mismatch is also performed. Within these contradictions, a comparative analysisof COVID-19 outbreak between two geographically close but demographicallyvery different countries – that is Oman and Pakistan – is performed.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.02.20050666: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:The simulator that was used has apparent limitations. There are only three cities for which the simulator has data. Also, during the running of the simulation, it was observed that mobility between the cities is almost …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.02.20050666: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:The simulator that was used has apparent limitations. There are only three cities for which the simulator has data. Also, during the running of the simulation, it was observed that mobility between the cities is almost non-existent. It is understandable, considering that cities of Muscat, Khasab, and Salalah are at the three corners of the country. With a more representative population and mobility data about different regions of the country, we may see more cases and a longer impact. In fact, it was surprising to see that Oman has an epidemic timeline of only two months, which cannot even be imagined in current unfolding of the events. We performed a simulation with similar kind of settings for Pakistan and found out that the impact may extend to 8 to 9 months [11]. Nevertheless, the cases and results provide an educated guideline to the authorities about worst and best case scenarios and important factor leading to corresponding outcomes. The paper also guide other researchers towards modeling such systems and why they should be careful about putting forward predictions.
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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