IMPACT OF REMOVAL STRATEGIES OF STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS ON THE NUMBER OF COVID-19 INFECTORS AND PEOPLE LEAVING THEIR HOMES

Abstract

As of November 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the world. One of the measures that has been taken to curb the spread of the virus is blanket stay-at-home orders. Staying at home significantly limits close contact with others and can, thus, decrease the number of new cases. However, if people refrain from going out, this will cause significant economic damage. For this reason, some people think that these orders should be revoked after a short period of time, and people should get out more often. However, if blanket stay-at-home restrictions are lifted before a significant decrease is seen in the number of new cases, the number of infected people is likely to increase within a short period. This will, in turn, hasten the next round of blanket stay-at-home orders and lead to a further reduction in people who can leave their home. Against this backdrop, this study examines below phenomena, through a multi-agent simulation. The early removal strategies of stay-at-home orders for increasing the number of people leaving their homes have the effect of both increasing and decreasing the number of such people. Therefore, we consider the strategies do not lead to a sufficient increase in the overall number of people leaving their homes. To examine these phenomena, we conducted the simulations that consist of six scenarios with the different removal condition of stay-at-home orders. As a result, we could confirm that when more removal conditions of stay-at-home orders were eased, the tendencies of more number of infected people and death people were increasing with some exceptions. In contrast, there were almost no differences among the numbers of people leaving their home of these scenarios. Based on the results, we also examined the possibility of a strategy that covers both infected people and the number of people allowed to leave their homes.