Global Analysis of a piecewise smooth epidemiological model of COVID-19

Abstract

Despite the huge relevance of vaccines for preventing COVID-19, physical isolation and quarantine of infected individuals are still the key strategies to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a COVID-19 transmission epidemiological model governed by ordinary differential equations, here we propose an intermittent non-pharmacological protocol to control the fraction of infected individuals. In our approach, unlike what generically happens for numerical simulation models, we provide a global analysis of the model, giving qualitative information about every initial condition. Under some simple hypothesis and variations of parameters, we present some bifurcations and we are able to predict the minimum social distancing effort that do not collapse the health system.