Control Intervention Strategies for Within-Host, Between-Host and their Efficacy in the Treatment, Spread of COVID-19: A Multi Scale Modeling Approach

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in more than 65.5 million infections and 15,14,695 deaths in 212 countries over the last few months. Different drug intervention acting at multiple stages of pathogenesis of COVID-19 can substantially reduce the infection induced, thereby decreasing the mortality. Also population level control strategies can reduce the spread of the COVID-19 substantially. Motivated by these observations, in this work we propose and study a multi scale model linking both within-host and between-host dynamics of COVID-19. Initially the natural history dealing with the disease dynamics is studied. Later comparative effectiveness is performed to understand the efficacy of both the within-host and population level interventions. Findings of this study suggest that a combined strategy involving treatment with drugs such as Arbidol, remdesivir, Lopinavir/Ritonavir that inhibits viral replication and immunotherapies like monoclonal antibodies, along with environmental hygiene and generalized social distancing proved to be the best and optimal in reducing the basic reproduction number and environmental spread of the virus at the population level.