Estimating effectiveness of preventing measures for 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19)

Abstract

This paper implements the infection process of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) in an agent-based model and compares the effectiveness of multiple infection prevention measures. In the model, 1120 virtual residents agents live in two towns where they commute to office or school and visiting stores. The model simulates an infection process in which they were exposed to the risk of transmission of the novel coronavirus. The results of the experiments showed that individual infection prevention measures (commuting, teleworking, class closing, contact rate reduction, staying at home after fever) alone or partially combined them do not produce significant effects. On the other hand, if comprehensive measures were taken, it was confirmed that the number of deaths, the infection rate, and the number of severe hospitalised patients per day were decreased significantly at the median and maximum respectively.