Modeling human behavior within mathematical models of infectious diseases is a key component to understand and control disease spread. We present a mathematical compartmental model of Susceptible–Infectious–Removed to compare the infected curves given by four different functional forms describing the transmission rate. These depend on the distance that individuals keep on average to others in their daily lives. We assume that this distance varies according to the balance between two opposite thrives: the self-protecting reaction of individuals upon the presence of disease to increase social distancing and their necessity to return to a culturally dependent natural social distance that occurs in the absence of disease. We present simulations to compare results for different society types on point prevalence, the peak size of a first epidemic outbreak and the time of occurrence of that peak, for four different transmission rate functional forms and parameters of interest related to distancing behavior, such as: the reaction velocity of a society to change social distance during an epidemic. We observe the vulnerability to disease spread of close contact societies, and also show that certain social distancing behavior may provoke a small peak of a first epidemic outbreak, but at the expense of it occurring early after the epidemic onset, observing differences in this regard between society types. We also discuss the appearance of temporal oscillations of the four different transmission rates, their differences, and how this oscillatory behavior is impacted through social distancing; breaking the unimodality of the actives-curve produced by the classical SIR-model.

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Revisiones Número de casos COVID-19 en Chile a 120 días con datos al 21/03/2020 y umbral del esfuerzo diario para aplanar la epicurva Number of COVID-19 cases in Chile at 120 days with data at 21/03/2020 and threshold of daily effort to flatten the epi-curve

Human interactions and perceptions about health risk are essential to understand the evolution over the course of a pandemic. We present a Susceptible-Exposed-Asymptomatic-Infectious-Recovered-Susceptible mathematical model with quarantine and social-distance-dependent transmission rates, to study COVID-19 dynamics. Human activities are split across different location settings: home, work, school, and elsewhere. Individuals move from home to the other locations at rates dependent on their epidemiological conditions and maintain a social distancing behavior, which varies with their location. We perform simulations and analyze how distinct social behaviors and restrictive measures affect the dynamic of the disease within a population. The model proposed in this study revealed that the main focus on the transmission of COVID-19 is attributed to the “home” location setting, which is understood as family gatherings including relatives and close friends. Limiting encounters at work, school and other locations will only be effective if COVID-19 restrictions occur simultaneously at all those locations and/or contact tracing or social distancing measures are effectively and strictly implemented, especially at the home setting.

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