Modelling Lockdown Effects on Controlling the Spread of COVID-19

Abstract

AbstractThe COVID-19 variant omicron is spreading rapidly, infecting about 1.2 million people in 2 months in Hong Kong from early January 2022. Locking down the city at the beginning of outbreak for an adequate period is effective in mitigation and suppression of disease transmission. However, it is difficult to implement the locking down proposal without strong supporting argument because of the accompanied economic loss. An appropriate mathematical model to provide key predictive information on the local epidemic and evaluate the effects of lockdown is reported in this paper. The number of susceptible citizens, infection cases and recovery number under some assumption on isolating citizens are predicted by solving the ordinary differential equations analytically. Observed infected cases during the fifth wave of outbreak in Hong Kong is taken as an example to illustrate the concept. Three lockdown scenarios are proposed and assessed by the developed mathematical approach. Early lockdown is illustrated to keep infected cases low, therefore very effective in controlling the spread by isolating the citizens in their own units.