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How Did The Scientists Conclude The Predictions?: Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) Model Is One Such Model Used

The Indian National Supermodel Committee predicted that India passed its COVID-19 peak in September 2020 and active cases would fall to a minimal level by February 2021. These predictions were made using a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered mathematical model, which divides the population into groups based on their infection status and tracks how these groups change over time as the pandemic progresses. The model helped estimate that without lockdowns, India could have seen over 14 million active cases by mid-May 2020 and more than 2 million deaths, but with current measures deaths should be less than 200,000.

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31 views

How Did The Scientists Conclude The Predictions?: Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) Model Is One Such Model Used

The Indian National Supermodel Committee predicted that India passed its COVID-19 peak in September 2020 and active cases would fall to a minimal level by February 2021. These predictions were made using a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered mathematical model, which divides the population into groups based on their infection status and tracks how these groups change over time as the pandemic progresses. The model helped estimate that without lockdowns, India could have seen over 14 million active cases by mid-May 2020 and more than 2 million deaths, but with current measures deaths should be less than 200,000.

Uploaded by

Raj Sharma
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Recently, the Indian National Supermodel Committee has announced that

India passed its 'COVID-19 peak' in the month of September 2020 and
the active cases are likely to fall to a 'minimal' level by February 2021.
These predictions are arrived at with the help of a mathematical model. 

In May 2020, the Department of Science and Technology (DST)


constituted the Indian National Supermodel Committee consisting of
mathematicians, computer scientists and medical professionals to track
the evolution of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the country and to
recommend future policy interventions.  

How did the scientists conclude the predictions?


The scientists arrived at these predictions with the help of mathematical
modelling. In the absence of cold numbers, they drew assumptions on
how quickly the disease spreads, the varying susceptibility of adults as
opposed to children and so forth. 

Susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model is one such model used


by the scientists for drawing conclusions. In this model, the population of
the country is divided into three groups, namely, Susceptible, Infectious,
and Recovered. The model assumes that an individual in a defined
population will be a part of any of these groups at any given point of time.
However, the number of people in each group changes over time. 
At the beginning of the pandemic, 'Susceptible' group has the highest
number of people while the 'Infectious' group has the lowest number of
people. As the pandemic advance, the number of people in the
'Susceptible' group decreases while the number in the 'Infectious' group
increases.

What are the key findings of the paper? 


Although the modelling committee was constituted of seven members, the
scientific paper published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research has
only three authors — a physician, a mathematician and a computer
scientist.

1- On 25 March 2020, the first nationwide lockdown in India came into


effect. 

2- The paper hypothesised that in the absence of a lockdown, the active


COVID-19 cases in the country would have crossed 14 million and the
peak would have arrived by the mid-May. 

3- India would have witnessed more than 2 million deaths in the absence
of a lockdown. 
4- The number of deaths in India with current trends is projected to be
less than 0.2 million. 

5- The report also stated that in the absence of subsequent lockdowns in


the month of April and May, India would have witnessed a peak between
0 and 5 million active infections and would have witnessed 0.5-1 million
deaths. 

6- The major limitation of this model was the non-availability of accurate


data and the data was crowd-sourced by 'covid19india.org'.

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