How can we best mitigate future pandemic waves while limiting collateral economic damage? As COVID-19 social distancing measures are relaxed across the United States, temporary shelter-in-place orders triggered by monitoring local hospital admissions can minimize the number of days of disruption while preventing overwhelming healthcare surges. We develop a mathematical optimization model on top of an SEIR-style simulation model with age group, risk group, and temporal fidelity. This work has been in response to independent requests from the city of Austin, the state of Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the White House Coronavirus Task Force to inform strategies for modulating social distancing policies.
Source: National Academy of Sciences
