Published time: 29 April 2020
Authors: Milad Radiom, Jean-Francois Berret
Keywords: Covid-19; Respiratory diseases; Epidemic; Modeling; Duplication Time
Abstract
The discovery of SARS-CoV-2, the responsible virus for the Covid-19 epidemic, has sparked a global health concern with many countries affected. Developing models that can interpret the epidemic and give common trend parameters are useful for prediction purposes by other countries that are at an earlier phase of the epidemic; it is also useful for future planning against viral respiratory diseases. One model is developed to interpret the fast-growth phase of the epidemic and another model for the full interpretation during the fast-, slow-and plateau phases. Both models are shown to agree reasonably with the data. It is shown that during the fast phase, the number of new infected cases in several countries depends on the total number of cases by a power-law relation with a scaling exponent equal to 0.82. During this phase, the duplication time is 1-3 days. The duplication time together with another parameter that controls the phase change from the fast phase to the slow and plateau phases, varying in the range of 0.1-0.5, may be used for data interpretation and for guiding predictions regarding this disease, e.g. the onset of the maximum in the number of new cases.
Common trends in the epidemic of Covid-19 disease
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