Managing awareness can avoid hysteresis in disease spread: an application to coronavirus Covid-19

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2021.110739Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The interplay between overexposure and awareness is investigated by a SEIRm model.

  • High level of overexposure can induce a hysteretic phenomenology.

  • Keeping awareness high can avoid dangerous transitions before disease eradication.

  • Numerical simulations confirm the impact of awareness on the backward scenario.

  • Google Trends data in the context of Covid19 qualitatively validate our findings.

Abstract

A SEIR-type model is investigated to evaluate the effects of awareness campaigns in the presence of factors that can induce overexposure to disease. We find that high levels of overexposure can drive system dynamics towards a backward phenomenology and that increasing people awareness through balanced and aware information can be crucial to avoid dangerous dynamical transitions as hysteresis or transient oscillations before disease eradication. Investigations in the time dependent regimes are provided to support the results. Google Trends data in the context of Covid19 are also used to stress how low levels of awareness, combined with high overexposure, can be related to recent episodes of epidemic resurgence in Europe. Our results suggest that the interplay between overexposure and awareness is a point that should not be underestimated both in the current and future management of the Covid19 emergency.

Keywords

Epidemic models
Backward bifurcation
Hysteresis
Awareness
Covid-19

Cited by (0)

View Abstract