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The adoption of containment measures to reduce the amplitude of the epidemic peak is a key aspect in tackling the rapid spread of an epidemic. Classical compartmental models must be modified and studied to correctly describe the effects of forced external actions to reduce the impact of the disease. The importance of social structure, such as the age dependence that proved essential in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, must be considered, and in addition, the available data are often incomplete and heterogeneous, so a high degree of uncertainty must be incorporated into the model from the beginning. In this work we address these aspects, through an optimal control formulation of a socially structured epidemic model in presence of uncertain data. After the introduction of the optimal control problem, we formulate an instantaneous approximation of the control that allows us to derive new feedback controlled compartmental models capable of describing the epidemic peak reduction. The need for long-term interventions shows that alternative actions based on the social structure of the system can be as effective as the more expensive global strategy. The timing and intensity of interventions, however, is particularly relevant in the case of uncertain parameters on the actual number of infected people. Simulations related to data from the first wave of the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Italy are presented and discussed.
The paradigm for compartment models in epidemiology assumes exponentially distributed incubation and removal times, which is not realistic in actual populations. Commonly used variations with multiple exponentially distributed variables are more flex
Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms and can spread through different ways. Mathematical models and computational simulation have been used extensively to investigate the transmission and spread of infectious diseases. In other
After the introduction of drastic containment measures aimed at stopping the epidemic contagion from SARS-CoV2, many governments have adopted a strategy based on a periodic relaxation of such measures in the face of a severe economic crisis caused by
In this paper, based on the Akaike information criterion, root mean square error and robustness coefficient, a rational evaluation of various epidemic models/methods, including seven empirical functions, four statistical inference methods and five dy
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how disruptive emergent disease outbreaks can be and how useful epidemic models are for quantifying risks of local outbreaks. Here we develop an analytical approach to calculate the dynamics and likelihood of ou