Estimating, Monitoring, and Forecasting the Covid-19 Epidemics: A Spatio-Temporal Approach Applied to NYC Data

Abstract: We propose an SEIR-type meta-population model to simulate and monitor the Covid-19 epidemic evolution. The basic model consists of seven compartments, namely susceptible (S), exposed (E), three infective classes, recovered (R), and deceased (D). We define these compartments for n age and gender groups in m different spatial locations. So, the resulting model has, for each age group, gender, and place, all epidemiological classes. The mixing between them is accomplished by means of time-dependent infection rate matrices. The model is calibrated with the curve of daily new infections in New York City and its boroughs, including census data, and the proportions of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths for each age range. We end up with a model that matches the reported curves and predicts accurately infection information for different places and age classes.