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KMID : 1143420200130423000
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Public Health Weekly Report
2020 Volume.13 No. 42 p.3000 ~ p.3008
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COVID-19 2020 Forecasts in South Korea Using Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases
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Baek Soo-Jin
Kim Yeon-Ju
Kwon Dong-Hyok
Ko Young-Suk
Lee Jong-Min
Jung Eun-Ok
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Abstract
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The outbreak of Coronavirus Infectious Disease-19 (COVID-19) in South Korea began on January 20, 2020 with a confirmed imported case from Wuhan, China. Following that, the first reported local outbreak of COVID-19 on February 16, 2020 was attributed to a mass gathering at a religious facility. Despite serving as an early warning that failing to practice social distancing and self-isolation would have grave consequences, cluster cases continued to occur in facilities such as medical institutions, sports facilities and call centers.
The aim of this study was to model the spread of COVID-19 to local communities and to predict the scale of the outbreak using the susceptible-exposed-infected-quarantined-recovered (SEIQR) epidemic model. The results indicated that the rate of transmission (i.e., the reproduction number) varied according to the social distancing level (South Korea implemented a three-level social distancing scheme on June 28, 2020) (see Figure 1), and increased due to major local cluster outbreaks, but significantly decreased after level 2 social distancing was implemented on August 23, 2020. Furthermore, the study found that on October 7, 2020 the infectious reproduction number was 0.92, which is a state of decreasing infectious disease prevalence. Based on this study’s epidemic modeling prediction, If the current reproduction number (0.88) is maintained, 50 to 60 new confirmed cases will continue to occur per day until October 27. Therefore, this study recommended that active quarantine measures and thorough health and hygiene management be maintained (e.g., a combination of masks, hand-washing, and social distancing).
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KEYWORD
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COVID-19, Mathematical modeling, Behavior change, Model forecast, Model prediction
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