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. 2020 Nov 26:8:215570-215581.
doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3040821. eCollection 2020.

Controlling the Outbreak of COVID-19: A Noncooperative Game Perspective

Anupam Kumar Bairagi  1   2 , Mehedi Masud  3 , Do Hyeon Kim  1 , Md Shirajum Munir  1 , Abdullah-Al Nahid  4 , Sarder Fakhrul Abedin  1   5 , Kazi Masudul Alam  2 , Sujit Biswas  6 , Sultan S Alshamrani  7 , Zhu Han  1   8 , Choong Seon Hong  1
Affiliations

Controlling the Outbreak of COVID-19: A Noncooperative Game Perspective

Anupam Kumar Bairagi et al. IEEE Access. .

Abstract

COVID-19 is a global epidemic. Till now, there is no remedy for this epidemic. However, isolation and social distancing are seemed to be effective preventive measures to control this pandemic. Therefore, in this article, an optimization problem is formulated that accommodates both isolation and social distancing features of the individuals. To promote social distancing, we solve the formulated problem by applying a noncooperative game that can provide an incentive for maintaining social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Furthermore, the sustainability of the lockdown policy is interpreted with the help of our proposed game-theoretic incentive model for maintaining social distancing where there exists a Nash equilibrium. Finally, we perform an extensive numerical analysis that shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of achieving the desired social-distancing to prevent the outbreak of the COVID-19 in a noncooperative environment. Numerical results show that the individual incentive increases more than 85% with an increasing percentage of home isolation from 25% to 100% for all considered scenarios. The numerical results also demonstrate that in a particular percentage of home isolation, the individual incentive decreases with an increasing number of individuals.

Keywords: COVID-19; Nash equilibrium; health economics; isolation; noncooperative game; social distancing.

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Figures

FIGURE 1.
FIGURE 1.
Exemplary System model. Isolation indicates staying at home whereas social distancing measures the distance of a individual from others.
FIGURE 2.
FIGURE 2.
Comparison of incentive (in log scale) for varying value of formula image.
FIGURE 3.
FIGURE 3.
Ecdf of incentives (in log scale) for different value of formula image with formula image and formula image using 50 runs.
FIGURE 4.
FIGURE 4.
Total incentive (average of 50 runs) for varying percentage of home isolation individuals when formula image and formula image.
FIGURE 5.
FIGURE 5.
Average individual incentive for varying percentage of home quarantine individuals when formula image and formula image.
FIGURE 6.
FIGURE 6.
Maximum possible lockdown period with varying number of individuals when formula image, formula image, and using total incentive shown in Figure 4.
FIGURE 7.
FIGURE 7.
Maximum possible lockdown period with varying formula image and formula image with total payoff shown in Figure 4.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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