The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has led to a surge in the interest in the mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. Disease transmission may be modeled as compartmental models, in which the population under study is divided into compartments and has assumptions about the nature and time rate of transfer from one compartment to another. Usually, they are composed of a system of ordinary differential equations in time. A class of such models considers the Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Recovered, and Deceased populations, the SEIRD model. However, these models do not always account for the movement of individuals from one region to another. In this work, we extend the formulation of SEIRD compartmental models to diffusion–reaction systems of partial differential equations to capture the continuous spatio-temporal dynamics of COVID-19. Since the virus spread is not only through diffusion, we introduce a source term to the equation system, representing exposed people who return from travel. We also add the possibility of anisotropic non-homogeneous diffusion. We implement the whole model in libMesh, an open finite element library that provides a framework for multiphysics, considering adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening. Therefore, the model can represent several spatial scales, adapting the resolution to the disease dynamics. We verify our model with standard SEIRD models and show several examples highlighting the present model’s new capabilities.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has led to a surge in interest in the mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. Such models are usually defined as compartmental models, in which the population under study is divided into compartments based on qualitative characteristics, with different assumptions about the nature and rate of transfer across compartments. Though most commonly formulated as ordinary differential equation models, in which the compartments depend only on time, recent works have also focused on partial differential equation (PDE) models, incorporating the variation of an epidemic in space. Such research on PDE models within a Susceptible, Infected, Exposed, Recovered, and Deceased framework has led to promising results in reproducing COVID-19 contagion dynamics. In this paper, we assess the robustness of this modeling framework by considering different geometries over more extended periods than in other similar studies. We first validate our code by reproducing previously shown results for Lombardy, Italy. We then focus on the U.S. state of Georgia and on the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, one of the most impacted areas in the world. Our results show good agreement with real-world epidemiological data in both time and space for all regions across major areas and across three different continents, suggesting that the modeling approach is both valid and robust.

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial -NoDerivatives| 4.0International License

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial -NoDerivatives| 4.0International License

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial -NoDerivatives| 4.0International License

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial -NoDerivatives| 4.0International License

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial -NoDerivatives| 4.0International License