Regarding the COVID-19 crisis from a systems engineering perspective

International audience; In the beginning of 2022, the world is still fighting the crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. The scientific community is still dedicating significant efforts to identify which are the better strategies to mitigate the pandemic and establish how and when to apply them. Modeling and simulation are a common method to replicate and foresee the behavior of the epidemic curve, but traditional analytical models are not capable to explain and reproduce the real evolution of the number of infections and deaths as they only concentrate in the epidemiological aspects of the virus. The COVID-19 crisis has an impact in all fundamental levels of society, and this is the reason why its modeling requires a global perspective and a holistic approach. Though the engineering scope is not common in the study of public health crises, this paper concludes that some engineering tools such as systems analysis and control theory may be the answer to build a high-fidelity model to support the decision-making facing the emergency.