A decision analytic approach for social distancing policies during early stages of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a crucial public health problem in the world that disrupted the lives of millions in many countries including the United States. In this study, we present a decision analytic approach which is an efficient tool to assess the effectiveness of early social distancing measures in communities with different population characteristics. First, we empirically estimate the reproduction numbers for two different states. Then, we develop an age-structured compartmental simulation model for the disease spread to demonstrate the variation in the observed outbreak. Finally, we analyze the computational results and show that early trigger social distancing strategies result in smaller death tolls; however, there are relatively larger second waves. Conversely, late trigger social distancing strategies result in higher initial death tolls but relatively smaller second waves. This study shows that decision analytic tools can help policy makers simulate different social distancing scenarios at the early stages of a global outbreak. Policy makers should expect multiple waves of cases as a result of the social distancing policies implemented when there are no vaccines available for mass immunization and appropriate antiviral treatments.

Predicting economic resilience of territories in Italy during the COVID-19 first lockdown

“…Finally, we differentiate from the work of Ertem, Araz, and Cruz-Aponte (2022b) since they rely on specific empirical models related to the specific domain of study (regional probabilistic seismic hazard analysis).…”

“…The necessity to safeguard public health objectives represents the main priority for decision-makers during global emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, data-driven expert and intelligent systems have been devised to help health organizations predict mortality ( Smith & Alvarez, 2021 ), forecast new cases ( Ertem, Araz, & Cruz-Aponte, 2022a ) and manage hospital readmissions ( Davazdahemami, Zolbanin, & Delen, 2022 ).…”

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“…Ertem Zeynep et al [13] proposed a decision analytical approach to estimate the effectiveness of social distancing methods. They proposed an age-structured compartmental simulation model to analyze computational results.…”

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