Dataset Information

Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 fatality trends: Death kinetics law versus infection-to-death delay rule.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has world-widely motivated numerous attempts to properly adjust classical epidemiological models, namely those of the SEIR-type, to the spreading characteristics of the novel Corona virus. In this context, the fundamental structure of the differential equations making up the SEIR models has remained largely unaltered-presuming that COVID-19 may be just "another epidemic". We here take an alternative approach, by investigating the relevance of one key ingredient of the SEIR models, namely the death kinetics law. The latter is compared to an alternative approach, which we call infection-to-death delay rule. For that purpose, we check how well these two mathematical formulations are able to represent the publicly available country-specific data on recorded fatalities, across a selection of 57 different nations. Thereby, we consider that the model-governing parameters-namely, the death transmission coefficient for the death kinetics model, as well as the apparent fatality-to-case fraction and the characteristic fatal illness period for the infection-to-death delay rule-are time-invariant. For 55 out of the 57 countries, the infection-to-death delay rule turns out to represent the actual situation significantly more precisely than the classical death kinetics rule. We regard this as an important step towards making SEIR-approaches more fit for the COVID-19 spreading prediction challenge.

SUBMITTER: Scheiner S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7261113 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 fatality trends: Death kinetics law versus infection-to-death delay rule.

Scheiner Stefan S Ukaj Niketa N Hellmich Christian C

Chaos, solitons, and fractals 20200530

The COVID-19 pandemic has world-widely motivated numerous attempts to properly adjust classical epidemiological models, namely those of the SEIR-type, to the spreading characteristics of the novel Corona virus. In this context, the fundamental structure of the differential equations making up the SEIR models has remained largely unaltered-presuming that COVID-19 may be just "another epidemic". We here take an alternative approach, by investigating the relevance of one key ingredient of the SEIR ...[more]

PMID: 32508398

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Project description:Significant alterations of cambial activity might be expected due to climate warming, leading to growing season extension and higher growth rates especially in cold-limited forests. However, assessment of climate-change-driven trends in intra-annual wood formation suffers from the lack of direct observations with a timespan exceeding a few years. We used the Vaganov-Shashkin process-based model to: (i) simulate daily resolved numbers of cambial and differentiating cells; and (ii) develop chronologies of the onset and termination of specific phases of cambial phenology during 1961-2017. We also determined the dominant climatic factor limiting cambial activity for each day. To asses intra-annual model validity, we used 8 years of direct xylogenesis monitoring from the treeline region of the Krkonoše Mts. (Czechia). The model exhibits high validity in case of spring phenological phases and a seasonal dynamics of tracheid production, but its precision declines for estimates of autumn phenological phases and growing season duration. The simulations reveal an increasing trend in the number of tracheids produced by cambium each year by 0.42 cells/year. Spring phenological phases (onset of cambial cell growth and tracheid enlargement) show significant shifts toward earlier occurrence in the year (for 0.28-0.34 days/year). In addition, there is a significant increase in simulated growth rates during entire growing season associated with the intra-annual redistribution of the dominant climatic controls over cambial activity. Results suggest that higher growth rates at treeline are driven by (i) temperature-stimulated intensification of spring cambial kinetics, and (ii) decoupling of summer growth rates from the limiting effect of low summer temperature due to higher frequency of climatically optimal days. Our results highlight that the cambial kinetics stimulation by increasing spring and summer temperatures and shifting spring phenology determine the recent growth trends of treeline ecosystems. Redistribution of individual climatic factors controlling cambial activity during the growing season questions the temporal stability of climatic signal of cold forest chronologies under ongoing climate change.

Dataset Information

Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 fatality trends: Death kinetics law versus infection-to-death delay rule.

Publications

Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 fatality trends: Death kinetics law versus infection-to-death delay rule.

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