Assessment of effective mitigation and prediction of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany using demographic information and spatial resolution

Abstract

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are important to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases as long as no vaccination or outstanding medical treatments are available. We assess the effectiveness of the sets of non-pharmaceutical interventions that were in place during the course of the Coron-avirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic in Germany. Our results are based on hybrid models, combining SIR-type models on local scales with spatial resolution. In order to account for the age-dependence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), we include realistic pre-pandemic and recently recorded contact patterns between age groups. The implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions will occur on changed contact patterns, improved isolation, or reduced infectiousness when, e.g., wearing masks. In order to account for spatial heterogeneity, we use a graph approach and we include high-quality information on commuting activities combined with traveling information from social networks. The remaining uncertainty will be accounted for by a large number of randomized simulation runs. Based on the derived factors for the effectiveness of different non-pharmaceutical interventions over the past months, we provide different forecast scenarios for the upcoming time.Mathematics Subject Classification (2010) 00A72 · 65L05 · 68U20

Regional opening strategies with commuter testing and containment of new SARS-CoV-2 variants in Germany

“…For the geographic resolution, we use a graph approach as presented in [11] and assign one SIR-type model to each German county. The resulting models will be coupled by the edges of the graph which represent the mobility between the regions.…”

“…The mobility data is obtained from the German Federal Employment Agency [21] complemented with geo-referenced Twitter data [22]. For more details on the data and the practical exchange between regions, we refer to [11]. In the graph, counties are not only connected to their geographical neighbors.…”

“…The sigmoidal cosine curves in Table 1 are defined by the actual incidence of the zone. Thus, the minimum values are adopted Table 1 Modified parameter ranges in comparison to [11]. We omit the age index i for better readability.…”

“…The range of contact patterns depends on the decreed non-pharmaceutical interventions. The baseline number of contacts φ B,i,j is obtained from [23,24] as described in [11,Sec. 3.2].…”

Managing SARS-CoV-2 Testing in Schools with an Artificial Intelligence Model and Application Developed by Simulation Data

“…Simulations are established as important methods to understand future scenarios in light of current conditions [3,36]. As a practice and a methodology, modeling lays the ground on necessary assumptions and parameters according to which agents are expected to behave and under which systems operate [37].…”