Agent based simulations of COVID-19

Eili Klein, Johns Hopkins University

Usage Details

The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront the need for accurate and timely forecasts of infection rates based on a range of conditions, parameters and settings. The project will model, using agent-based methods, the spread of the novel coronavirus in order to inform policy makers, healthcare system operators such as hospitals and county health departments, and the public of what to expect given current or potential measures such as self-isolation, mandatory quarantines, or due to possibly changing properties of the virus. 

The project attempts to aid policy makers by using models of spread to estimate how many hospital beds a regional area may need as the disease spreads through the population.   In the near term the project will look at the immediate impact of various strategies on virus spread, hospital bed occupancy, effect on health care workers, the potential effect of interventions to reduce transmission in Maryland and other locations, both domestic and foreign. In the longer term the project will start to investigate the effect of seasonality and the hope that this may provide in terms of reducing transmission.