Identification of COVID-19 spread mechanisms based on first-wave data, simulation models, and evolutionary algorithms.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 epidemic has shown that efficient prediction models are required, and the well-known SI, SIR, and SEIR models are not always capable of capturing the real dynamics. Modified models with novel structures could help identify unknown mechanisms of COVID-19 spread. OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to provide additional insights into the COVID-19 spread mechanisms based on different models' parameterization which was performed using evolutionary algorithms and the first-wave data. METHODS: Data from the Our World in Data COVID-19 database was analysed, and several models-SI, SIR, SEIR, SEIUR, and Bass diffusion-and their variations were considered for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The models' parameters were tuned with differential evolution optimization method L-SHADE to find the best fit. The algorithm for the automatic identification of the first wave was developed, and the differential evolution was applied to model parameterization. The reproduction rates (R0) for the first wave were calculated for 61 countries based on the best fits. RESULTS: The performed experiments showed that the Bass diffusion model-based modification could be superior compared to SI, SIR, SEIR and SEIUR due to the component responsible for spread from an external factor, which is not directly dependent on contact with infected individuals. The developed modified models containing this component were shown to perform better when fitting to the first-wave cumulative infections curve. In particular, the modified SEIR model was better fitted to the real-world data than the classical SEIR in 43 cases out of 61, based on Mann-Whitney U tests; the Bass diffusion model was better than SI for 57 countries. This showed the limitation of the classical models and indicated ways to improve them. CONCLUSIONS: By using the modified models, the mechanism of infection spread, which is not directly dependent on contacts, was identified, which significantly influences the dynamics of the spread of COVID-19.

Evolutionary methods for variable selection in the epidemiological modeling of cardiovascular diseases.

BACKGROUND: The redundancy of information is becoming a critical issue for epidemiologists. High-dimensional datasets require new effective variable selection methods to be developed. This study implements an advanced evolutionary variable selection method which is applied for cardiovascular predictive modeling. The epidemiological follow-up study KIHD (Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study) was used to compare the designed variable selection method based on an evolutionary search with conventional stepwise selection. The sample contains in total 433 predictor variables and a response variable indicating incidents of cardiovascular diseases for 1465 study subjects. RESULTS: The effectiveness of variable selection methods was investigated in combination with two models: Generalized Linear Logistic Regression and Support Vector Machine. We managed to decrease the number of variables from 433 to 38 and save the predictive ability of the models used. Their performance was evaluated with an F-score metric. At most, we gained 65.6% and 67.4% of the F-score before and after variable selection respectively. All the results were averaged over 5-folds of a cross-validation procedure. CONCLUSIONS: The presented evolutionary variable selection method allows a reduced set of variables to be chosen which are relevant to predicting cardiovascular diseases. A reference list of the most meaningful variables is introduced to be used as a basis for new epidemiological studies. In general, the multicollinearity of variables enables different combinations of predictors to be used and the same performance of models to be attained.