Modelling the influence of progressive social awareness, lockdown and anthropogenic migration on the dynamics of an epidemic

TL;DR

This paper extends the SIR epidemic model to include social awareness, lockdown strategies, and migration, demonstrating their combined effects on controlling disease spread and optimizing intervention strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel extended SIR model incorporating social awareness, staggered lockdown exits, and migration effects, providing new insights into epidemic control measures.

Findings

Social awareness reduces the basic reproduction number R0.

Staggered lockdown exits help contain infection and are economically beneficial.

Progressive social awareness combined with staggered lockdown exit strategies is most effective.

Abstract

The basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model is extended to include effects of progressive social awareness, lockdowns and anthropogenic migration. It is found that social awareness can effectively contain the spread by lowering the basic reproduction rate $R_0$. Interestingly, the awareness is found to be more effective in a society which can adopt the awareness faster compared to the one having a slower response. The paper also separates the mortality fraction from the clinically recovered fraction and attempts to model the outcome of lockdowns, in absence and presence of social awareness. It is seen that staggered exits from lockdowns are not only economically beneficial but also helps to curb the infection spread. Moreover, a staggered exit strategy with progressive social awareness is found to be the most efficient intervention. The paper also explores the effects of anthropogenic migration on the dynamics of the epidemic in a two-zone scenario. The calculations yield dissimilar evolution of different fractions in different zones. Such models can be convenient to strategize the division of a large zone into smaller sub-zones for a disproportionate imposition of lockdown, or, an exit from one. Calculations are done with parameters consistent with the SARS-COV-2 pathogen in the Indian context.