The Impact of Staying at Home on Controlling the Spread of COVID -19: Strategy of Control

ABSTRACT

Abstract In this paper, we present a new mathematical model to describe the evolution of the COVID-19 in countries under the state of emergency. Where the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping country after country. The Italian and Moroccan authorities have declared a state of emergency in response to the growing threat of this novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak by March 09 and 20, respectively. In-state of emergency, citizens cannot go out to public spaces without special authorization from local authorities. But after all these efforts exerted by these authorities, the number of new cases of the COVID-19 continues to rise significantly, which confirms the lack of commitment of some citizens. First, we aim to investigate the cause of new infections despite all strategies of control followed in these countries including media reports, awareness, and treatment, self-distancing and quarantine, by estimating the number of these people who underestimate the lives and safety of citizens and put them at risk. To do this, we use real data of the COVID-19 in Italy and Morocco to estimate the parameters of the model, and then we predict the number of these populations. Second, we propose an optimal control strategy that could be the optimal and the efficient way for the Moroccan and Italian authorities and other countries to make the state of emergency more efficient and to control the spread of the COVID-19. The model is analyzed for both countries and then to compare the implications of the obtained results. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the strategy of control that we propose and to show what would have been happened in Morocco and Italy if this strategy of control was applied early.