Human Mobility Driven Modeling of an Infectious Disease

Abstract

In conventional disease models, disease properties are dominant parameters (e.g., infection rate, incubation pe-riod). As seen in the recent literature on infectious diseases, human behavior - particularly mobility - plays a crucial role in spreading diseases. This paper proposes an epidemiological model named SEIRD+m that considers human mobility instead of modeling disease properties alone. SEIRD+m relies on the core deterministic epidemic model SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, and Recovered), adds a new compartment D - Dead, and enhances each SEIRD component by human mobility information (such as time, location, and movements) retrieved from cell-phone data collected by SafeGraph. We demonstrate a way to reduce the number of infections and deaths due to COVID-19 by restricting mobility on specific Census Block Groups (CBGs) detected as COVID-19 hotspots. A case study in this paper depicts that a reduction of mobility by 50 % could help reduce the number of infections and deaths in significant percentages in different population groups based on race, income, and age.