Assessing suppression strategies against epidemicoutbreaks like COVID-19: the SPQEIR model

The current COVID-19 outbreak represents a most serious challenge for societies worldwide. It isendangering the health of millions of people, and resulting in severe socioeconomic challenges dueto lock-down measures. Governments worldwide aim to devise exit strategies to revive the economywhile keeping the pandemic under control. The problem is that the effects of distinct measures arenot well quantified. This paper compares several suppression approaches and potential exit strategiesusing a new extended epidemic SEIR model. It concludes that while rapid and strong lock-down isan effective pandemic suppression measure, a combination of other strategies such as social distanc-ing, active protection and removal can achieve similar suppression synergistically. This quantitativeunderstanding will support the establishment of mid- and long-term interventions. Finally, the paperprovides an online tool that allows researchers and decision makers to interactively simulate diversescenarios with our model.