Adapting a Physical Earthquake-Aftershock Model to Simulate the Spread of COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: There exists a need for a simple, deterministic, scalable, and accurate model that captures the dominant physics of pandemic propagation. We propose such a model by adapting a physical earthquake/aftershock model to COVID-19. The aftershock model revealed the physical basis for the statistical Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model as a highly non-linear diffusion process, thus permitting a grafting of the underlying physical equations into a formulation for calculating infection pressure propagation in a pandemic-type model. Our model shows that the COVID-19 pandemic propagates through an analogous porous media with hydraulic properties approximating beach sand and water. Model results show good correlations with reported cumulative infections for all cases studied. In alphabetica

SUBMITTER: Gunatilake T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9778620 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature