You are cordially invited to join Sasin Research Seminar.

Effects of control measures and their impacts on COVID-19 transmission dynamics

By Assistant Professor Chonawee Supatgiat , Ph.D., Sasin Finance Faculty Friday June 25, 2021, 12:00 -13:00 pm. Abstract: Governments around the world have grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic for more than a year. Control measures such as social distancing, use of face masks in public places, business and school closures, city or transportation lockdowns, mass gathering bans, population education and engagement, contact tracing, and improved mass testing protocols are being used to contain the pandemic. Currently, there are no studies to date that rank the effectiveness of these measures, resulting in government responses that may be uncoordinated and inefficient. In this study, we developed a Discrete Time Markov Chain model that captures the above control measures and ranks them. We found that the importance of the measures changes over time and depends on the stage of transmission dynamics, as well as the ecological environment. For example, contact tracing is a powerful measure to effectively control the pandemic, however, our results show that while it is indeed helpful during the early stages of the pandemic, it is much less important after a vaccination program takes effect. Besides, our model improved the standard SEIR compartmental model by taking into account the dynamic temporal transmission and recovery probabilities along with considering a portion of the population that will not comply with government-mandated control measures. If implemented, our novel and unique model may assist many countries in pandemic control decisions. Venue: The seminar will be online via Zoom. Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link. For more information please contact Khun Nanthapak Pinyo at 02 218 4036 or researchseminar@sasin.edu.