A COVID-19 epidemic model with latency period

Z Liu; P Magal; O Seydi; G Webb

doi:10.1016/j.idm.2020.03.003

A COVID-19 epidemic model with latency period

Infect Dis Model. 2020 Apr 28:5:323-337. doi: 10.1016/j.idm.2020.03.003. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Z Liu¹, P Magal², O Seydi³, G Webb⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, People's Republic of China.
² Univ. Bordeaux, France CNRS, IMB, UMR 5251, F-33400, Talence, France.
³ Département Tronc Commun, École Polytechnique de Thiés, Senegal.
⁴ Mathematics Department, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

Abstract

At the beginning of a COVID-19 infection, there is a period of time known as the exposed or latency period, before an infected person is capable of transmitting the infection to another person. We develop two differential equations models to account for this period. The first is a model that incorporates infected persons in the exposed class, before transmission is possible. The second is a model that incorporates a time delay in infected persons, before transmission is possible. We apply both models to the COVID-19 epidemic in China. We estimate the epidemiological parameters in the models, such as the transmission rate and the basic reproductive number, using data of reported cases. We thus evaluate the role of the exposed or latency period in the dynamics of a COVID-19 epidemic.

Keywords: Corona virus; Epidemic mathematical model; Isolation; Public closings; Quarantine; Reported and unreported cases.