Metadata about: The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the global health and world's economy have been profound and unseen since the Spanish flu of 1918-19. As of now, many countries have been severely affected, partly because of slow responses to the crisis, ill-preparedness of their health system, and the fragile health infrastructure and the shortage of protective equipment. This note evaluates various scenarios, based on an estimation of number of identified and unidentified infected cases, and examines the effectiveness of different policy responses to contain this pandemic. Our result, based on an estimation of the model for Iran, show that in many instances the number of unidentified cases, including asymptomatic individuals, could be much bigger than the reported numbers. The results confirm that in such circumstances, social distancing alone cannot be an effective policy unless a large portion of the population confine themselves for an extended period of time, which is not only difficult to implement, but it could also prove extremely costly and damaging to the economy. An alternative policy, this note argues, is to couple effective social distancing with extensive testing, even to those who are asymptomatic, and isolate the identified cases actively. Otherwise, many lives will be lost, and the health system will collapse, adding to the ongoing economic troubles that many countries have started to encounter.

About: The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the global health and world's economy have been profound and unseen since the Spanish flu of 1918-19. As of now, many countries have been severely affected, partly because of slow responses to the crisis, ill-preparedness of their health system, and the fragile health infrastructure and the shortage of protective equipment. This note evaluates various scenarios, based on an estimation of number of identified and unidentified infected cases, and examines the effectiveness of different policy responses to contain this pandemic. Our result, based on an estimation of the model for Iran, show that in many instances the number of unidentified cases, including asymptomatic individuals, could be much bigger than the reported numbers. The results confirm that in such circumstances, social distancing alone cannot be an effective policy unless a large portion of the population confine themselves for an extended period of time, which is not only difficult to implement, but it could also prove extremely costly and damaging to the economy. An alternative policy, this note argues, is to couple effective social distancing with extensive testing, even to those who are asymptomatic, and isolate the identified cases actively. Otherwise, many lives will be lost, and the health system will collapse, adding to the ongoing economic troubles that many countries have started to encounter.

an Entity references as follows:

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http://ns.inria.fr/covid19/graph/entityfishing	3
http://ns.inria.fr/covid19/graph/articles	3

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