OPTIMAL INTERVENTION STRATEGIES FOR MINIMIZING TOTAL INCIDENCE DURING AN EPIDEMIC
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2023
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Mcode
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Language
en
Pages
20
354-373
354-373
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SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, Volume 83, issue 2
Abstract
This article considers the minimization of the total number of infected individuals over the course of an epidemic in which the rate of infectious contacts can be reduced by time-dependent nonpharmaceutical interventions. The societal and economic costs of interventions are taken into account using a linear budget constraint which imposes a trade-off between short-term heavy interventions and long-term light interventions. We search for an optimal intervention strategy in an infinite-dimensional space of controls containing multiple consecutive lockdowns, gradually imposed and lifted restrictions, and various heuristic controls based, for example, on tracking the effective reproduction number. Mathematical analysis shows that among all such strategies, the global optimum is achieved by a single constant-level lockdown of maximum possible magnitude. Numerical simulations highlight the need for careful timing of such interventions and illustrate their benefits and disadvantages compared to strategies designed for minimizing peak prevalence. Rather counterintuitively, adding restrictions prior to the start of a well-planned intervention strategy may even increase the total incidence.Description
Funding Information: *Received by the editors June 21, 2022; accepted for publication (in revised form) November 18, 2022; published electronically March 16, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1137/22M1504433 Funding: This work was supported by Project 105572 NordicMathCovid as part of the Nordic Programme on Health and Welfare, funded by NordForsk. \dagger Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden (tom.britton@math.su.se, https://staff.math.su.se/tom.britton/). \ddagger Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, Aalto University, FI-02015 Espoo, Finland (lasse.leskela@aalto.fi, http://math.aalto.fi/\sim lleskela/). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 SIAM.
Keywords
epidemic final size, herd immunity, lockdown policy, prevention strategy, SIR epidemic model
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Citation
Britton, T & Leskela, L 2023, ' OPTIMAL INTERVENTION STRATEGIES FOR MINIMIZING TOTAL INCIDENCE DURING AN EPIDEMIC ', SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, vol. 83, no. 2, pp. 354-373 . https://doi.org/10.1137/22M1504433
