COVIDHunter

COVIDHunter simulates the spread of COVID-19 to forecast daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths under varying mitigation measures and environmental conditions.

Key Features:

• Simulation of mitigation strategies: Evaluates existing mitigation measures for a given geographical region and estimates the strength of future interventions required to control disease spread.
• Quantification of infection spread: Computes the average number of new infections caused by an infected individual while incorporating external factors such as climate, temperature, and humidity that affect transmission rates.
• Policy guidance: Simulates scenarios of different mitigation strategies to project impacts on healthcare demand and inform decision-making to avoid healthcare system overload.
• Flexibility and configurability: Allows modification of model parameters for different environmental conditions and policy measures to adapt to diverse regional applications.

Scientific Applications:

• Healthcare system management: Projects demand on hospital beds and ICU capacity under various mitigation scenarios, illustrated by a case study for Switzerland indicating maintenance of current measures to prevent exceeding hospital capacities.
• Policy formulation: Predicts outcomes of different intervention levels to support policymakers in balancing public health objectives with socio-economic considerations.

Methodology:

Uses a simulation-based approach that integrates data on current mitigation measures and environmental conditions (including climate, temperature, and humidity) to predict daily infection rates, hospitalizations, and fatalities, with dynamic adjustments based on real-time data inputs.