Efficient social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: integrating economic and public health considerations

• Main Authors: Chen, Kexin, Pun, Chi Seng, Wong, Hoi Ying
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Science::Mathematics; Google Mobility Indices; Economic Modeling
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/162666
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Although social distancing can effectively contain the spread of infectious diseases by reducing social interactions, it may have economic effects. Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic create dilemmas for policymakers because the long-term implementation of restrictive social distancing policies may cause massive economic damage and ultimately harm healthcare systems. This paper proposes an epidemic control framework that policymakers can use as a data-driven decision support tool for setting efficient social distancing targets. The framework addresses three aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic that are related to social distancing or community mobility data: modeling, financial implications, and policy-making. Thus, we explore the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent economic situation as functions of historical pandemic data and mobility control. This approach allows us to formulate an efficient social distancing policy as a stochastic feedback control problem that minimizes the aggregated risks of disease transmission and economic volatility. We further demonstrate the use of a deep learning algorithm to solve this control problem. Finally, by applying our framework to U.S. data, we empirically examine the efficiency of the U.S. social distancing policy.