Discussion of “Evaluate the Risk of Resumption of Business for the States of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut via a Pre-Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Transmission Model of COVID-19”

Abstract

Tian et al. (2021) proposed the Susceptible-Unidentified infectious-Self-healing without being confirmed-Confirmed cases (SIHC) model that divides the population into four compartments as opposed to three, which is assumed by the popular Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered model (SIR; Kermack and McKendrick, 1927). Specifically, the authors divided the infectious compartment into those who exhibit symptoms, and asymptomatic carriers. Instead of using a recovered/removed compartment, the authors assumed that individuals in the infectious compartment eventually end up confirmed and hospitalized or quarantined, or self-healed without being confirmed. This novel segregation is of practical value as it matches the current practices in fighting COVID-19. In the rest of this discussion, we comment on the approach that the authors have proposed, and suggest some possible extension of the work for future research.