Yang, P. orcid.org/0000-0002-8553-7127, Qi, J., Zhang, S.H. et al. (5 more authors) (2020) Feasibility study of mitigation and suppression strategies for controlling COVID-19 outbreaks in London and Wuhan. PLoS ONE, 15 (8). e0236857. ISSN 1932-6203
Abstract
Recent outbreaks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led a global pandemic cross the world. Most countries took two main interventions: suppression like immediate lockdown cities at epicenter or mitigation that slows down but not stopping epidemic for reducing peak healthcare demand. Both strategies have their apparent merits and limitations; it becomes extremely hard to conduct one intervention as the most feasible way to all countries. Targeting at this problem, this paper conducted a feasibility study by defining a mathematical model named SEMCR, it extended traditional SEIR (Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered) model by adding two key features: a direct connection between Exposed and Recovered populations, and separating infections into mild and critical cases. It defined parameters to classify two stages of COVID-19 control: active contain by isolation of cases and contacts, passive contain by suppression or mitigation. The model was fitted and evaluated with public dataset containing daily number of confirmed active cases including Wuhan and London during January 2020 and March 2020. The simulated results showed that 1) Immediate suppression taken in Wuhan significantly reduced the total exposed and infectious populations, but it has to be consistently maintained at least 90 days (by the middle of April 2020). Its success heavily relied on sufficiently external support from other places of China. This mode was not suitable to other countries that have no sufficient health resources. 2) In London, it is possible to take a hybrid intervention of suppression and mitigation for every 2 or 3 weeks over a longer period to balance the total infections and economic loss. While the total infectious populations in this scenario would be possibly 2 times than the one taking suppression, economic loss and recovery of London would be less affected. 3) Both in Wuhan and London cases, one important issue of fitting practical data was that there were a large portion (probably 62.9% in Wuhan) of self-recovered populations that were asymptomatic or mild symptomatic. These people might think they have been healthy at home and did not go to hospital for COVID-19 tests. Early release of intervention intensity potentially increased a risk of the second outbreak.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | Epidemic propagation; COVID-19; Mitigation; Suppression; SEIR |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Jul 2020 09:47 |
Last Modified: | 10 Aug 2020 16:05 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0236857 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:163443 |