RESTORE: REalistic forecaSTing, cOntrol and pREparedness for coming COVID-19 waves (R-10896)

Over the following months Belgian society will be asked to adapt its behavior in order to keep the COVID-19 outbreak under control and not to jeopardise our healthcare system. This calls for an expertbased policy that is supported by accurate medium-term model forecasts on the further COVID-19 progression to assess the impacts of possible control and containment measures. For that purpose, we will start from established population-based SEIR-models and extend these to account for age- and space-dependent disease dynamics, the stochasticity intrinsic to disease spread and hospital bed capacity. These extended models will be complemented with a socioeconomic model to quantify the effects of measures on consumption, labor supply and economic activity. Finally, a controller will be developed that interacts with the aforementioned models to identify the optimal set of control and mitigation measures. The extended and holistic SEIR modeling framework offers a solid basis for providing Belgian healthcare institutions and policy makers with more accurate predictions. Currently, the consortium already provides short-term forecasts to policy makers, and hence it has all connections and simple models in place to guarantee a swift delivery of improved tools.

Keywords:Covid-19, EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PUBLIC HEALTH, MODELS INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Disciplines:Infectious diseases, Biostatistics, Epidemiology