lmg8 / ssc_case_study_2021

STATISTICAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 2021 CASE STUDIES IN DATA ANALYSIS COMPETITION

Impact of Public Health Interventions on the Spread of COVID-19 in Ontario

https://ssc.ca/en/meetings/annual/2021-annual-meeting/case-studies-competition

https://ssc.ca/en/case-study/modeling-covid-19-disease-dynamics-canada

Background

Compartment models refer to a broad class of infectious disease models that seek to understand how infectious diseases spread throughout susceptible populations. The basic SIR model stands for susceptible, infected, and recovered, indicating the states (or compartments) of individuals at a given point in time. More complex versions of the model include, for example, compartments where individuals are exposed but not yet infectious (a latency period) or a return to susceptibility after recovery. The rate at which individuals move between states is usually modelled by ordinary differential equations, though both deterministic and stochastic versions of these models exist. The goal for the application of compartment models is not to realistically model or predict the outbreak exactly, but rather to explore plausible scenarios for infections given various input parameters and constraints.

Case study objectives

The goal of this case study is to explore the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in Canada with a compartmental model, and define one to three clear research questions that your model seeks to address. You may choose any type of compartment model within this broad class, and use any data or parameters found from publicly available sources and/or published literature to run your simulations.