Does social distancing matter for infectious disease propagation? A SEIR model and Gompertz law based cellular automaton

Abstract

In this paper, we present stochastic synchronous cellular automaton defined on a square lattice. The automaton rules are based on SEIR model with probabilistic parameters gathered from real-world data on human mortality and SARS-CoV-2 disease characteristics. With computer simulations, we show the influence of the neighbourhood radius on the number of infected and deceased agents in the artificial population. The increase of the neighbourhood radius favors the spread of the epidemic. However, for a large range of interactions of exposed (who are both inward for and/or untested against) agents, even isolation of infected agents cannot prevent successful disease propagation. This supports aggressive testing against disease as one of the useful strategies preventing large peaks of infection in SARS-CoV-2-like disease spreading.