Experimentally Guided Modeling and Simulation for Cholera Dynamics

Project Summary/AbstractThe pandemic of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is currently on-going with massive numbersof cases and high morbidity and mortality. The disease is caused by a novel coronavirus which is nownamed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Effective control strategies forCOVID-19 rely on a deep understanding of the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2. Meanwhile,policy making in the management of the pandemic is significantly impacted by the interaction betweenthe outbreak development and the economic growth, and there is currently a paucity of researchexamining such interaction. The overall objective of this proposal is to establish a new mathematical andcomputational modeling framework to investigate the transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the USbased on available data, and to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public health and theeconomy. To achieve this objective, the team will pursue two specific aims: (1) Modeling the spread andhealth impact of COVID-19; (2) Modeling the economic impact of COVID-19. The proposed research issignificant because it is expected to advance the current understanding of COVID-19 transmissiondynamics, to provide realistic prediction on the development and long-term evolution of the diseaseoutbreak, and to quantify the interaction between epidemiological and economic factors under the impactof COVID-19, all of which are important for the control and management of the pandemic. The approachis innovative in the development of a sophisticated mathematical and computational framework thatincorporates both the epidemic and economic aspects of COVID-19, and in the integration of rigorousmathematical modeling and analysis, intensive numerical simulation, and realistic epidemic data. Theproject represents an interdisciplinary collaboration among an applied and computational mathematicianwith long-term interest in infectious disease modeling (Wang), an epidemiologist and health scientist withextensive working experiences at CDC (Heath), a business and management professor with abackground in public heath (Mullen), and a data analyst and geographic information system expert (Mix).The success of this project will not only build a solid knowledge base for the complex transmissiondynamics of COVID-19, but also provide important guidelines for the government and the public healthadministration in pandemic management and policy development.