Expanded SEIRCQ Model Applied to COVID-19 Epidemic Control Strategy Design and Medical Infrastructure Planning

Abstract

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has demanded a quick response from governments in terms of planning contingency efforts that include the imposition of social isolation measures and an unprecedented increase in the availability of medical services. Both courses of action have been shown to be critical to the success of epidemic control. Under this scenario, the timely adoption of effective strategies allows the outbreak to be decelerated at early stages. The objective of this study is to present an epidemic model specially tailored for the study of the COVID-19 epidemics, and the model is aimed at allowing the integrated study of epidemic control strategies and dimensioning of the required medical infrastructure. Along with the theoretical model, a case study with three prognostic scenarios is presented for the first wave of the epidemic in the city of Manaus, the capital city of Amazonas state, Brazil. Although the temporary collapse of the medical infrastructure is hardly avoidable in the state-of-affairs at this time (April 2020), the results show that there are feasible control strategies that could substantially reduce the overload within reasonable time. Furthermore, this study delivers and presents an intuitive, straightforward, free, and open-source online platform that allows the direct application of the model. The platform can hopefully provide better response time and clarity to the planning of contingency measures.