Modeling the Control of COVID-19: Impact of Policy Interventions and Meteorological Factors

In this paper, we propose a dynamical model to describe the transmission of COVID-19, which is spreading in China and many other countries. To avoid a larger outbreak in the worldwide, Chinese government carried out a series of strong strategies to prevent the situation from deteriorating. Home quarantine is the most important one to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In order to estimate the effect of population quarantine, we divide the population into seven categories for simulation. Based on a Least-Squares procedure and officially published data, the estimation of parameters for the proposed model is given. Numerical simulations show that the proposed model can describe the transmission of COVID-19 accurately, the corresponding prediction of the trend of the disease is given. The home quarantine strategy plays an important role in controlling the disease spread and speeding up the decline of COVID-19. The control reproduction number of most provinces in China are analyzed and discussed adequately. We should pay attention to that, though the epidemic is in decline in China, the disease still has high risk of human-to-human transmission continuously. Once the control strategy is removed, COVID-19 may become a normal epidemic disease just like flu. Further control for the disease is still necessary, we focus on the relationship between the spread rate of the virus and the meteorological conditions. A comprehensive meteorological index is introduced to represent the impact of meteorological factors on both high and low migration groups. As the progress on the new vaccine, we design detail vaccination strategies for COVID-19 in different control phases and show the effectiveness of efficient vaccination. Once the vaccine comes into use, the numerical simulation provide a promptly prospective research.