CoViD-19 epidemic follows the "kinetics" of enzymes with cooperative substrate binding

Abstract

The Hill equation, which models the cooperative ligand-receptor binding equilibrium, turns out to be useful in modeling the progression of infectious disease outbreaks such as CoViD-19. The equation fits well the data for total and daily case numbers, allows tentative predictions for the half-point and end point of the epidemic, and presents a mathematical characterization of how social interventions "flatten the curve" of the disease progression.

Keywords: CoViD-19; Michaelis-Menten; enzyme kinetics; hill equation; ligand binding.