Modeling Alternative Pandemic Intervention Strategies: A COVID-19 Case Study

Keywords: Health Geography, Medical Geography, COVID-19, pandemic, modeling, agent-based modeling, public health, North Carolina
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This study offers a measure of the efficacy of the governor's pandemic intervention orders in North Carolina by recreating the COVID-19 pandemic using an agent-based model. It explores the potential outcomes of no intervention as well as other intervention scenarios, both more and less strict, presented in punditry debates as alternatives to the governor’s orders. The following pandemic outcomes are compared with the observed COVID-19 pandemic data to investigate the potential magnitude of difference under different intervention strategies: basic difference in counts of infection and mortality, percent change in affected proportions of population, odds ratios of certain outcomes (i.e. X.X% higher chance of dying under Scenario A), change in R0 for the study time and population, and change in time-horizon of the pandemic.