Analysis of COVID-19 infection waves in Tokyo by Avrami equation

TL;DR

This study models COVID-19 infection waves in Tokyo using phase transformation dynamics theory, accurately simulating wave structures and identifying causes like holidays and virus variants to aid future predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the Avrami equation to simulate and analyze COVID-19 wave structures in Tokyo with high accuracy.

Findings

Successful simulation of all major infection waves in Tokyo

Identification of holiday and variant effects on wave structures

Effective estimation of future infection trends and vaccination impact

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to simulate all COVID-19 infection waves in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, by phase transformation dynamics theory, and to quantitatively analyze the detailed structure of the waveform for estimating the cause. The whole infection wave in Tokyo was basically expressed by the superposition of the 5 major waves as in Japan as a whole. Among these waves, the detailed structure was seen in the 3rd and the 5th waves, where the number of infections increased remarkably due to the holidays. It was characterized as "New Year holiday effect" for New Year holidays, "Tokyo Olympics holiday effect" for Olympics holidays, and "Delta variant effect" for the replacement of the virus with Delta variant. Since this method had high simulation accuracy for the cumulative number of infections, it was effective in estimating the cause, the number of infections in the near future and the vaccination effect by quantitative analysis of the detailed structure of the waveform.