Abstract

COVID-19--a viral infectious disease--has quickly emerged as a global pandemic infecting millions of people with a significant number of deaths across the globe. The symptoms of this disease vary widely. Depending on the symptoms an infected person is broadly classified into two categories namely, asymptomatic and symptomatic. Asymptomatic individuals display mild or no symptoms but continue to transmit the infection to otherwise healthy individuals. This particular aspect of asymptomatic infection poses a major obstacle in managing and controlling the transmission of the infectious disease. In this paper, we attempt to mathematically model the spread of COVID-19 under various intervention strategies. The impact of various factors, such as the presence of asymptotic individuals, lockdown strategies, social distancing practices, quarantine, and hospitalization, on the disease transmission is extensively studied. We consider SEIR type epidemiological models, incorporated with social contact matrix representing contact structures among different age groups of the population. Numerical simulation of the model shows the dependence of the second wave on the lockdown and its exit policies during the first wave.