Managing Epidemics: Dynamic Countermeasures and Frictions

EasyChair Preprint 14856

Abstract

After an epidemic outbreak, government and medical institutions try to mitigate the consequences with suitable interventions. Unfortunately, interventions that seem to be successful in theory may be degraded in practice by manifold types of frictions such as delays and erroneous situation assessments. This paper discusses the effects of such frictions. For this purpose, a traditional compartmental model is supplemented by a rule-based control unit, which sets countermeasures into effect when situation assessments exceed critical threshold values.

The model is used to represent the chain of events which occurred in Italy in early 2020. Using analytical considerations, we focus on stability and on the calculation of the reproduction number. With the help of simulation runs, we also investigate the sensitivity of the model parameters and the potential influence of the control unit. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the underlying model and of the executed analysis.

Keyphrases: Reproduction number, compartmental model, control unit, countermeasures, epidemic modelling

@booklet{EasyChair:14856,
  author    = {Felix Zurek and Leander Schwarzmeier and Benedetta Dionisi Ferrera and Christina Kuttler and Joachim Draeger},
  title     = {Managing Epidemics: Dynamic Countermeasures and Frictions},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 14856},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}