Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing
With the multiple waves of COVID-19 in China and other countries, there is an urgent need to design effective containment, especially nonpharmaceutical interventions, to combat the transmission. Media reports on COVID-19—which can induce precautionary behaviour such as social distancing, by providin...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley
2022-01-01
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| Series: | Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/3954598 |
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| author | Yinjiao Gong Aili Wang Jin Guo Stacey R. Smith? |
| author_facet | Yinjiao Gong Aili Wang Jin Guo Stacey R. Smith? |
| author_sort | Yinjiao Gong |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | With the multiple waves of COVID-19 in China and other countries, there is an urgent need to design effective containment, especially nonpharmaceutical interventions, to combat the transmission. Media reports on COVID-19—which can induce precautionary behaviour such as social distancing, by providing disease-related information to the public—are thought to be effective in containing the spread. We include the media-reporting data collected from authoritative and popular websites, along with the corresponding IP-visiting data, to study the effects of media reports in curbing the outbreak of COVID-19 in Beijing. To quantify how social distancing affects the spread of COVID-19, we differentiate the fully susceptible from those susceptibles who are media aware and practice social distancing or are quarantined. We propose a discrete compartment model with the fully susceptible, the media-aware susceptible, and the quarantined susceptible as three separate classes. We adopt functions dependent on the media reports and the contacts of media-aware susceptibles to describe the progression rate of susceptibles to media-aware susceptibles. By fitting the targeted model to data on the two Beijing outbreaks, we estimated the reproduction numbers for the two outbreaks as R0=1.6818 and R0=1.3251, respectively. Cross-correlation analysis on our collected data suggests a strong correlation between the media reporting and epidemic case data. Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis show that even with the intensified interventions in force, reducing either the social distancing uptake rate or the average duration of social distancing for media-aware susceptibles could aggravate the severity of the two outbreaks in Beijing by magnifying the final confirmed cases and lengthening the end time of the pandemic. Our findings demonstrate that enhancing social distancing and media reporting alone, if done in sufficient measures, are enough to alleviate the COVID-19 epidemic. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-d035c42a9fd941dfa418ab1c1d93f9a7 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1607-887X |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2022-01-01 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society |
| spelling | doaj-art-d035c42a9fd941dfa418ab1c1d93f9a72025-02-03T06:05:50ZengWileyDiscrete Dynamics in Nature and Society1607-887X2022-01-01202210.1155/2022/3954598Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in BeijingYinjiao Gong0Aili Wang1Jin Guo2Stacey R. Smith?3School of Mathematics and Information ScienceSchool of Mathematics and Information ScienceSchool of Mathematics and Information ScienceDepartment of Mathematics and Faculty of MedicineWith the multiple waves of COVID-19 in China and other countries, there is an urgent need to design effective containment, especially nonpharmaceutical interventions, to combat the transmission. Media reports on COVID-19—which can induce precautionary behaviour such as social distancing, by providing disease-related information to the public—are thought to be effective in containing the spread. We include the media-reporting data collected from authoritative and popular websites, along with the corresponding IP-visiting data, to study the effects of media reports in curbing the outbreak of COVID-19 in Beijing. To quantify how social distancing affects the spread of COVID-19, we differentiate the fully susceptible from those susceptibles who are media aware and practice social distancing or are quarantined. We propose a discrete compartment model with the fully susceptible, the media-aware susceptible, and the quarantined susceptible as three separate classes. We adopt functions dependent on the media reports and the contacts of media-aware susceptibles to describe the progression rate of susceptibles to media-aware susceptibles. By fitting the targeted model to data on the two Beijing outbreaks, we estimated the reproduction numbers for the two outbreaks as R0=1.6818 and R0=1.3251, respectively. Cross-correlation analysis on our collected data suggests a strong correlation between the media reporting and epidemic case data. Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis show that even with the intensified interventions in force, reducing either the social distancing uptake rate or the average duration of social distancing for media-aware susceptibles could aggravate the severity of the two outbreaks in Beijing by magnifying the final confirmed cases and lengthening the end time of the pandemic. Our findings demonstrate that enhancing social distancing and media reporting alone, if done in sufficient measures, are enough to alleviate the COVID-19 epidemic.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/3954598 |
| spellingShingle | Yinjiao Gong Aili Wang Jin Guo Stacey R. Smith? Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society |
| title | Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing |
| title_full | Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing |
| title_fullStr | Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing |
| title_full_unstemmed | Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing |
| title_short | Modelling the Impact of Media-Induced Social Distancing on the Containment of COVID-19 in Beijing |
| title_sort | modelling the impact of media induced social distancing on the containment of covid 19 in beijing |
| url | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/3954598 |
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