Coronavirus – Scientific insights and societal aspects

Volpert, Vitaly; Banerjee, Malay; d’Onofrio, Alberto; Lipniacki, Tomasz; Petrovskii, Sergei; Tran, Viet Chi

doi:10.1051/mmnp/2020010

Cited by 22 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Among the perplexing problems that mathematical models face when they are used to estimate epidemiological parameters and to forecast the evolution of the outbreak, two stand out: (a) the uncertainty regarding the day-zero of the outbreak, the knowledge of which is crucial to assess the stage and dynamics of the epidemic, especially during the first growth period, and (b) the uncertainty that characterizes the actual number of the asymptomatic infected cases in the total population (see e.g. [ 15 , 16 ]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing day-zero and forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak in Lombardy, Italy: A compartmental modelling and numerical optimization approach

Russo¹,

Anastassopoulou

Tsakris

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Introduction Italy became the second epicenter of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic after China, surpassing by far China’s death toll. The disease swept through Lombardy, which remained in lockdown for about two months, starting from the 8th of March. As of that day, the isolation measures taken in Lombardy were extended to the entire country. Here, assuming that effectively there was one case “zero” that introduced the virus to the region, we provide estimates for: (a) the day-zero of the outbreak in Lombardy, Italy; (b) the actual number of asymptomatic infected cases in the total population until March 8; (c) the basic ( R 0 )and the effective reproduction number ( R e ) based on the estimation of the actual number of infected cases. To demonstrate the efficiency of the model and approach, we also provide a tentative forecast two months ahead of time, i.e. until May 4, the date on which relaxation of the measures commenced, on the basis of the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports released by Google on March 29. Methods To deal with the uncertainty in the number of the actual asymptomatic infected cases in the total population Volpert et al. (2020), we address a modified compartmental Susceptible/ Exposed/ Infectious Asymptomatic/ Infected Symptomatic/ Recovered/ Dead (SEIIRD) model with two compartments of infectious persons: one modelling the cases in the population that are asymptomatic or experience very mild symptoms and another modelling the infected cases with mild to severe symptoms. The parameters of the model corresponding to the recovery period, the time from the onset of symptoms to death and the time from exposure to the time that an individual starts to be infectious, have been set as reported from clinical studies on COVID-19. For the estimation of the day-zero of the outbreak in Lombardy, as well as of the “effective” per-day transmission rate for which no clinical data are available, we have used the proposed SEIIRD simulator to fit the numbers of new daily cases from February 21 to the 8th of March. This was accomplished by solving a mixed-integer optimization problem. Based on the computed parameters, we also provide an estimation of the basic reproduction number R 0 and the evolution of the effective reproduction number R e . To examine the efficiency of the model and approach, we ran the simulator to “forecast” the epidemic two months ahead of time, i.e. from March 8 to May 4. For this purpose, we considered the reduction in mobility in Lombardy as released on March 29 by Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, and the effects of social distancing and of the very strict measures taken by the government on March 20 and March 21, 2020. Results Based on the proposed methodological procedure, we estimated that the expected...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing day-zero and forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak in Lombardy, Italy: A compartmental modelling and numerical optimization approach

Russo¹,

Anastassopoulou

Tsakris

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Another easing was the so-called social bubble (a small group of family and friends who are allowed to see each other as the covid-19 lockdown measures are gradually eased). The easing of restrictions was associated with both a gradual decline in the disease growth and social causes -a decline in the life quality of quarantined people [12], [13], [14], [17]. This strategy of easing restrictions has reduced stress and other side effects of self-isolation.…”

Section: Research Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among these materials, we note articles reflecting the impact of the pandemic on the psychological climate of the Earth's population. Thus, the scientists considered the problems caused by quarantine stress conditions [12], [13], [14], [17]. The problem of social stigmatization of coronavirus patients was raised in a number of articles by foreign researchers [15], [16].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflection on the Social and Psychological Consequences of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the New Vocabulary of the Non-professional English Language Medical Discourse

Katermina¹,

Lipiridi²

2020

Proceedings of the Research Technologies of Pandemic Coronavirus Impact (RTCOV 2020)

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The article is concerned with neologisms of non-professional English language medical discourse, devoted to the social and psychological consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. It analyzes the reflection in the new medical vocabulary of such social realities created by the pandemic as observance, violation and easing of the quarantine regulations; creation of a strategy of public behavior aimed at containing the pandemic growth; growth of mood of panic and conspiracy theories; and the stigmatization of patients with coronavirus. This layer of everyday and colloquial medical vocabulary is considered from the standpoint of semantic, stylistic, linguopragmatic and axiological analysis, revealing the pragmatic potential of new words and expressions reflecting the pandemic impact on public consciousness. In particular, the humorous, ironic, satirical plans of this new medical vocabulary are considered, serving the purpose of creating a new value system aimed at overcoming the consequences of the pandemic through psychological compensation. The links between nonprofessional medical and political discourses are also identified, reflecting the extreme politicization of modern media, which affects the reality perception by common participants in the discourse. The combination of these vocabulary items provides a comprehensive picture of the specifics of public life in mass psychology during the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The study material is the articles of the Urban Dictionary online dictionary of Internet slang devoted to various aspects of the coronavirus pandemic impact on public and private life. Based on the analysis of this constantly updated material, we deduce the regularities of the attitude evolution towards the coronavirus pandemic of a significant part of the international community.

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“…The dynamics of the epidemic is modeled by the standard SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) compartment model represented in Figure 1. We refer to [6,14,15] for additional details on this model, as well as the description of many other mathematical epidemic propagation models (and to [19,44,55,56] for specific coronavirus models). During the epidemic propagation, each individual can be either "Susceptible", "Infected" or "Recovered", and (S t , I t , R t ) denotes the proportion of each category at time t ≥ 0.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contact rate epidemic control of COVID-19: an equilibrium view

Élie

Hubert

Turinici

2020

Math. Model. Nat. Phenom.

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We consider the control of the COVID-19 pandemic through a standard SIR compartmental model. This control is induced by the aggregation of individuals’ decisions to limit their social interactions: when the epidemic is ongoing, an individual can diminish his/her contact rate in order to avoid getting infected, but this effort comes at a social cost. If each individual lowers his/her contact rate, the epidemic vanishes faster, but the effort cost may be high. A Mean Field Nash equilibrium at the population level is formed, resulting in a lower effective transmission rate of the virus. We prove theoretically that equilibrium exists and compute it numerically. However, this equilibrium selects a sub-optimal solution in comparison to the societal optimum (a centralized decision respected fully by all individuals), meaning that the cost of anarchy is strictly positive. We provide numerical examples and a sensitivity analysis, as well as an extension to a SEIR compartmental model to account for the relatively long latent phase of the COVID-19 disease. In all the scenario considered, the divergence between the individual and societal strategies happens both before the peak of the epidemic, due to individuals’ fears, and after, when a significant propagation is still underway.

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Coronavirus – Scientific insights and societal aspects

Cited by 22 publications

References 7 publications

Tracing day-zero and forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak in Lombardy, Italy: A compartmental modelling and numerical optimization approach

Tracing day-zero and forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak in Lombardy, Italy: A compartmental modelling and numerical optimization approach

Reflection on the Social and Psychological Consequences of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the New Vocabulary of the Non-professional English Language Medical Discourse

Contact rate epidemic control of COVID-19: an equilibrium view

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