Alexander Tulchinsky , Gary Lin , Alisa Hamilton , Nodar Kipshidze , Eili Klein
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for robust epidemic forecasts, projecting health burden over short- and medium-term time horizons. Many COVID-19 forecasting models incorporate information on infection transmission, disease progression, and the effects of interventions, but few combine information on how individuals change their behavior based on altruism, fear, risk perception, or personal economic circumstances. Moreover, early models of COVID-19 produced under- and over-estimates, failing to consider the complexity of human responses to disease threat and prevention measures. In this study, we modeled adaptive behavior during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Maryland, USA. The adapted compartmental model incorporates time-varying transmissibility informed on data of environmental factors (e.g., absolute humidity) and behavioral factors (aggregate mobility and perceived risk). We show that humidity and mobility alone did little to explain transmissibility after the first 100 days. Including adaptive behavior in the form of perceived risk as a function of hospitalizations more effectively explained inferred transmissibility and improved out-of-sample fit, demonstrating the model’s potential in real-time forecasting. These results demonstrate the importance of incorporating endogenous behavior in models, particularly during a pandemic, to produce more accurate projections, which could lead to more impactful and efficient decision making and resource allocation.
期刊介绍:
Epidemics publishes papers on infectious disease dynamics in the broadest sense. Its scope covers both within-host dynamics of infectious agents and dynamics at the population level, particularly the interaction between the two. Areas of emphasis include: spread, transmission, persistence, implications and population dynamics of infectious diseases; population and public health as well as policy aspects of control and prevention; dynamics at the individual level; interaction with the environment, ecology and evolution of infectious diseases, as well as population genetics of infectious agents.