The role of quarantine and isolation in controlling COVID-19 hospitalization in Oman

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a mathematical model for the dynamics of COVID-19 to assess the impact of placing healthy individuals in quarantine and isolating infected ones on the number of hospitalization and intensive care unit cases. The proposed model is fully analyzed, The analysis includes positivity of solutions, local and global stability of the disease-free equilibrium and derivation of the basic and control reproduction numbers of the model. Oman COVID-19 data is used to calibrate the model and estimate the parameters. In particular, the published data for the year 2020 is used, when two waves of the disease hit the country. Moreover, this period of time is chosen when no vaccine had been introduced, but the non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) strategies were the only effective methods to control the spread of the disease and, consequently, control the hospitalization cases to avoid pressuring the health system. Based on the estimated parameters, the reproduction numbers and the contribution of different transmission routes are approximated numerically. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to identify the significant parameters in spreading the disease. Numerical simulation is carried out to demonstrate the effects of quarantine and isolation on the number of hospitalized cases.