Cyclical lock-down and the economic activity along the pandemic of COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a cyclical lock-down strategy with group splitting to control COVID-19 spread while maintaining economic activity, highlighting the importance of start-up timing for effectiveness.

Contribution

It proposes a novel on-off lock-down protocol with group shifting, demonstrating its benefits for reducing infections and supporting economic stability.

Findings

Group splitting improves infection control and economic activity.

Timing of protocol initiation is critical for success.

Both strategies reduce infection rates.

Abstract

The investigation focuses on an on-off protocol for controlling the COVID-19 widespread. The protocol establishes a working period of 4 days for all the citizens, followed by 8 days of lock-down. We further propose splitting people into smaller groups that undergo the on-off protocol, but shifted in time. This procedure is expected to regularize the overall economic activity. Our results show that either the on-of protocol and the splitting into groups reduces the amount of infected people. However, the latter seems to be better for economic reasons. Our simulations further show that the start-up time is a key issue for the success of the implementation.