A Comparative Study of Compartmental Models for COVID-19 Transmission in Ontario, Canada

TL;DR

This study compares five compartmental models, including a new extended model, to evaluate their effectiveness in simulating COVID-19 transmission in Ontario during early 2022.

Contribution

The paper introduces an extended compartmental model and assesses the comparative performance of five models in real-world COVID-19 data.

Findings

Extended model improves fit to data

Model performance varies across different transmission phases

Some models better capture variant-driven transmission dynamics

Abstract

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reached over 1.3 million in Ontario, Canada by June 4, 2022. The continued spread of the virus underlying COVID-19 has been spurred by the emergence of variants since the initial outbreak in December, 2019. Much attention has thus been devoted to tracking and modelling the transmission of COVID-19. Compartmental models are commonly used to mimic epidemic transmission mechanisms and are easy to understand. Their performance in real-world settings, however, needs to be more thoroughly assessed. In this comparative study, we examine five compartmental models -- four existing ones and an extended model that we propose -- and analyze their ability to describe COVID-19 transmission in Ontario from January 2022 to June 2022.