Seminar
Controlling Epidemic Spread: Reducing Economic Losses with Targeted Closures
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Series
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SpeakerOzan Candogan (University of Chicago)
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LocationOnline
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Date and time
January 27, 2022
14:00 - 15:00
Abstract: We propose a spatial epidemic spread model to study the Covid-19 epidemic. In our
model, a city consists of multiple neighborhoods, each of which has five disease compartments (susceptible/exposed/infected clinical/infected subclinical/recovered). Due
to the movement of individuals across neighborhoods (e.g., commuting to work), the infections in one neighborhood can trigger infections in others. We consider the problem
of a planner who reduces the economic activity in a targeted way to curb the spread
of the epidemic. We focus both on the regime with a small number of infections and
the regime with a large number of infections, and provide a framework for obtaining
the policies that induce the lowest economic costs.
We use the available data on individuals’ movements, level of economic activity
in different neighborhoods, and the state of the epidemic to apply our framework to
the control of the epidemic in NYC. Our results indicate that targeted closures can
achieve the same policy goals at substantially lower economic losses than city-wide
closure policies. In addition, to curb the spread of the epidemic in NYC, coordination
with other counties is paramount. Finally, the optimal policy (under different scenarios)
promotes some level of economic activity in Midtown Manhattan locations (due to their
economic importance) while imposing closures in many other neighborhoods in the city
(to curb the spread of the disease). Contrary to what might be intuitively expected,
and due to the spatial aspect of the epidemic spread, neighborhoods with higher level
of infections should not necessarily be the ones exposed to the most stringent economic
closure measures.