ASSESSING EGYPTIAN AIRPORTS CLOSURE FOR INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS AS A TRANSPORTATION MEASURE TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 SPREAD IN THE COUNTRY

Ahmed Elkafoury, Maged Zagow, Khaled Saeed, Ahmed Mahmoud Darwish

Abstract

One of the measures applied by the Egyptian government to control the spread of the COVID-19 infection is performing flight suspension at the Egyptian Airports against international flights to/from Egypt. This policy was launched on March 19th, 2020. This paper develops a method to evaluate the benefits of this measure regarding the disease control. The methodology is based on mathematical models to assess the policy regarding a) reduced the number of the imported COVID-19 infections, b) reduced probability risk of a major epidemic occurrence, c) gained days to a major epidemic initializing, d) reduced probability of epidemic occurrence in each day after the airport closure. The application of the model for five scenarios of 10%, 30%, 60%, 70%, or 90% of infected cases contacts that were traced and successfully isolated showed that airport closure reduced the number of the imported COVID-19 cases by about 78.6% during the first 10 days of application. It also reduces the probability of major epidemic occurrence to about 62% for contact trace and an isolation percentage of 90%, with a 40.1% reduction as opposed to the situation in case of no airport closure. This reduction provides a delay of about 4 days, 1 day in epidemic occurrence for 90% and 70% contact tracing and isolation percentages, respectively. The probability of epidemic occurrence each day is also estimated. The study presents a method for developing an applicable model for any country tending to assess the impact of airport blocking against international flights on the COVID-19 spreading.

 

Keywords: COVID-19, Epidemic, Egypt, Airport Closure, Flight Suspension

 

DOI:https://doi.org/10.35741/issn.0258-2724.58.1.3


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