A mechanistic model for airborne and direct human-to-human transmission of COVID-19: Effect of mitigation strategies and immigration of infectious persons

TL;DR

This study develops a new mathematical model for COVID-19 transmission that includes airborne and direct contact pathways, analyzes its stability, and evaluates mitigation strategies using real data from India.

Contribution

It introduces a novel COVID-19 transmission model considering airborne viruses and direct contact, with stability analysis and parameter estimation from real data.

Findings

Reproduction number depends on contact and airborne transmission rates.

Disease-free equilibrium is stable under certain conditions.

Vaccinating susceptibles is more effective during vaccine shortages.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most significant global crisis since World War II that affected almost all the countries of our planet. To control the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, it is necessary to understand how the virus is transmitted to a susceptible individual and eventually spread in the community. The primary transmission pathway of COVID-19 is human-to-human transmission through infectious droplets. However, a recent study by Greenhalgh et al. (Lancet: 397:1603-1605, 2021) demonstrates 10 scientific reasons behind the airborne transmission of SARS-COV-2. In the present study, we introduce a novel mathematical model of COVID-19 that considers the transmission of free viruses in the air besides the transmission of direct contact with an infected person. The basic reproduction number of the epidemic model is calculated using the next-generation operator method and observed that it depends on both the transmission rate of direct contact and free virus contact. The local and global stability of disease-free equilibrium (DFE) is well established. Analytically it is found that there is a forward bifurcation between the DFE and an endemic equilibrium using central manifold theory. Next, we used the nonlinear least-squares technique to identify the best-fitted parameter values in the model from the observed COVID-19 mortality data of two major districts of India. Using estimated parameters for Bangalore urban and Chennai, different control scenarios for mitigation of the disease are investigated. Results indicate that when a vaccine crisis is there, the public health authorities should prefer to vaccinate the susceptible people compared to the recovered persons who are now healthy. Along with face mask use, treatment of hospitalized patients and vaccination of susceptibles, immigration should be allowed in a supervised manner so that economy of the overall society remains healthy.