paper

Can the COVID-19 epidemic be controlled on the basis of daily test reports?

arXiv:2003.06967 · doi:10.1109/LCSYS.2020.3009912

Abstract

This paper studies if and to which extent COVID-19 epidemics can be controlled by authorities taking decisions on public health measures on the basis of daily reports of swab test results, active cases and total cases. A suitably simplified process model is derived to support the controllability analysis, highlighting the presence of very significant time delay; the model is validated with data from several outbreaks. The analysis shows that suppression strategies can be effective if strong enough and enacted early on. It also shows how mitigation strategies can fail because of the combination of delay, unstable dynamics, and uncertainty in the feedback loop; approximate conditions based on the theory of limitation of linear control are given for feedback control to be feasible.

arXiv comment6 pages double-column + 2 pages of supplementary material. 6-page paper published on IEEE Control Systems Letters which has strict page limit and does not accept supplementary material. Paper currently published on IEEE Control Systems Letters Early Access (see DOI)

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