8,497 research outputs found
Initial impacts of global risk mitigation measures taken during the combatting of the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper presents an analysis of risk mitigation measures taken by countries around the world facing the current COVID-19 outbreak. In light of the current pandemic the authors collated and clustered (using harmonised terminology) the risk mitigation measures taken around the globe in the combat to contain, and since March 11 2020, to limiting the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus known to cause the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This overview gathers lessons learnt, provides an update on the current knowledge for authorities, sectors and first responders on the effectiveness and may allow enhanced prevention, preparedness and response for future outbreaks. Various measures such as mobility restrictions, physical distancing, hygienic measures, socio economic restrictions, communication and international support mechanisms have been clustered and are reviewed in terms of the nature of the actions taken and their qualitative early-perceived impact. At the time of writing, it is still too premature to express the quantitative effectiveness of each risk mitigation cluster, but it seems that the best mitigation results are reported when applying a combination of voluntary and enforceable measures.JRC.E.7-Knowledge for Security and Migratio
Heterogeneous social interactions and the COVID-19 lockdown outcome in a multi-group SEIR model
We study variants of the SEIR model for interpreting some qualitative
features of the statistics of the Covid-19 epidemic in France. Standard SEIR
models distinguish essentially two regimes: either the disease is controlled
and the number of infected people rapidly decreases, or the disease spreads and
contaminates a significant fraction of the population until herd immunity is
achieved. After lockdown, at first sight it seems that social distancing is not
enough to control the outbreak. We discuss here a possible explanation, namely
that the lockdown is creating social heterogeneity: even if a large majority of
the population complies with the lockdown rules, a small fraction of the
population still has to maintain a normal or high level of social interactions,
such as health workers, providers of essential services, etc. This results in
an apparent high level of epidemic propagation as measured through
re-estimations of the basic reproduction ratio. However, these measures are
limited to averages, while variance inside the population plays an essential
role on the peak and the size of the epidemic outbreak and tends to lower these
two indicators. We provide theoretical and numerical results to sustain such a
view
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