Is Time to Intervention in the COVID-19 Outbreak Really Important?

by Emanuele Borgonovo and Xuefei Lu

Italy has been one of the first countries timewise strongly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The adoption of social distancing and heavy lockdown measures is posing a heavy burden on the population and the economy. The timing of the measures has crucial policy-making implications. The modeling shows that the lockdown has strongly deviated the pandemic trajectory in Italy. However, global sensitivity indices show that the the time of intervention is 4 times more relevant than quarantine, and eight times more important than intrinsic features of the pandemic such as protection and infection rates. 
 

The Paper: “Is Time to Intervention in the COVID-19 Outbreak Really Important? A Global Sensitivity Analysis Approach”