Combatting COVID-19

2020
Ankit Bhardwaj*, Han Ching Ou*, Haipeng Chen, Shahin Jabbari, Milind Tambe, Rahul Panicker, and Alpan Raval. 11/2020. “Robust Lock-Down Optimization for COVID-19 Policy Guidance.” In AAAI Fall Symposium. robust_lock-down_optimization_for_covid-19_policy_guidance.pdf
Bryan Wilder, Marie Charpignon, Jackson A Killian, Han-Ching Ou, Aditya Mate, Shahin Jabbari, Andrew Perrault, Angel Desai, Milind Tambe, and Maimuna S. Majumder. 9/24/2020. “Modeling between-population variation in COVID-19 dynamics in Hubei, Lombardy, and New York City.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Publisher's Version pnas_full.pdf
Evaluating COVID-19 Lockdown and Business-Sector-Specific Reopening Policies for Three US States
Jackson A. Killian, Marie Charpignon, Bryan Wilder, Andrew Perrault, Milind Tambe, and Maimuna S. Majumder. 8/24/2020. “Evaluating COVID-19 Lockdown and Business-Sector-Specific Reopening Policies for Three US States.” In KDD 2020 Workshop on Humanitarian Mapping. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Background: The United States has been particularly hard-hit by COVID-19, accounting for approximately 30% of all global cases and deaths from the disease that have been reported as of May 20, 2020. We extended our agent-based model for COVID-19 transmission to study the effect of alternative lockdown and reopening policies on disease dynamics in Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi. Specifically, for each state we simulated the spread of the disease had the state enforced its lockdown approximately one week earlier than it did. We also simulated Georgia's reopening plan under various levels of physical distancing if enacted in each state, making projections until June 15, 2020.

Methods: We used an agent-based SEIR model that uses population-specific age distribution, household structure, contact patterns, and comorbidity rates to perform tailored simulations for each region. The model was first calibrated to each state using publicly available COVID-19 death data as of April 23, then implemented to simulate given lockdown or reopening policies.

Results: Our model estimated that imposing lockdowns one week earlier could have resulted in hundreds fewer COVID-19-related deaths in the context of all three states. These estimates quantify the effect of early action, a key metric to weigh in developing prospective policies to combat a potential second wave of infection in each of these states. Further, when simulating Georgia’s plan to reopen select businesses as of April 27, our model found that a reopening policy that includes physical distancing to ensure no more than 25% of pre-lockdown contact rates at reopened businesses could allow limited economic activity to resume in any of the three states, while also eventually flattening the curve of COVID-19-related deaths by June 15, 2020.
covid_19_us_states.pdf
Aniruddha Adiga, Lijing Wang, Adam Sadilek, Ashish Tendulkar, Srinivasan Venkatramanan, Anil Vullikanti, Gaurav Aggarwal, Alok Talekar, Xue Ben, Jiangzhuo Chen, Bryan Lewis, Samarth Swarup, Milind Tambe, and Madhav Marathe. 6/5/2020. “Interplay of global multi-scale human mobility, social distancing, government interventions, and COVID-19 dynamics”. Publisher's Version merrxiv.pdf
Aditya Mate, Jackson A. Killian, Bryan Wilder, Marie Charpignon, Ananya Awasthi, Milind Tambe, and Maimuna S. Majumder. 4/13/2020. “Evaluating COVID-19 Lockdown Policies For India: A Preliminary Modeling Assessment for Individual States.” SSRN. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Background: On March 24, India ordered a 3-week nationwide lockdown in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. While the lockdown has been effective, our model suggests that completely ending the lockdown after three weeks could have considerable adverse public health ramifications. We extend our individual-level model for COVID-19 transmission [1] to study the disease dynamics in India at the state level for Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh to estimate the effect of further lockdown policies in each region. Specifically, we test policies which alternate between total lockdown and simple physical distancing to find "middle ground" policies that can provide social and economic relief as well as salutary population-level health effects.

Methods: We use an agent-based SEIR model that uses population-specific age distribution, household structure, contact patterns, and comorbidity rates to perform tailored simulations for each region. The model is first calibrated to each region using publicly available COVID-19 death data, then implemented to simulate a range of policies. We also compute the basic reproduction number R0 and case documentation rate for both regions.

Results: After the initial lockdown, our simulations demonstrate that even policies that enforce strict physical distancing while returning to normal activity could lead to widespread outbreaks in both states. However, "middle ground" policies that alternate weekly between total lockdown and physical distancing may lead to much lower rates of infection while simultaneously permitting some return to normalcy.
ssrn-covid_lockdown_policies_india.pdf