A stochastic, individual based model for the evaluation of the impact of non pharmacological interventions on COVID 19 transmission in Slovakia

The COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the most significant healthcare challenges that humanity faces. We developed a stochastic, individual-based model of transmission of COVID-19 in Slovakia. The proposed model is based on current clinical knowledge of the disease and takes into account the age structure of the population, distribution of the population into the households, interactions within the municipalities, and interaction among the individuals travelling between municipalities. Furthermore, the model incorporates the effect of age-dependent severity of COVID-19 and realistic trajectories of patients through the healthcare system. We assess the impact of the governmental non-pharmacological interventions, such as population-wide social distancing, social distancing within specific subsets of population, reduction of travel between the municipalities, and self-quarantining of the infected individuals. We also evaluate the impact of relaxing of strict restrictions, efficacy of the simple state feedback-based restrictions in controlling the outbreak, and the effect of superspreaders on the disease dynamics. Our simulations show that non-pharmacological interventions reduce the number of infected individuals and the number of fatalities, especially when the social distancing of particularly susceptible subgroups of the population is employed along with case isolation. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement Authors report no external sources of funding. ### Author Declarations All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed; any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained and details of the IRB/oversight body are included in the manuscript. Yes All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes The code needed to reproduce the simulations is available online on GitHub under GPLv3 licence at the following URL: https://github.com/michal-racko/corona-virus-slovakia. We also developed an independent C++ version of the simulation software. Python and C++ frameworks provided the consistent results. The C++ version of the simulation software can be found at the following URL: https://github.com/dubovsky14/sars cov2 slovakia. Unfortunately, because of the confidential nature of the data utilized, especially the Origin-Destination matrix, we are unable to publish these data online. These data can be obtained upon further request.