TANG Biao, HE Sha
With the increasing risk of asymptomatically infected and imported cases of COVID-19, it brought tremendous pressure to the prevention and control strategy of “both imported cases and spread within the city should be prevented” in China. In this study, we propose a discrete stochastic model to describe and analyze the impact of imported cases and asymptomatic infected popualtion on the evolution of the COVID-19 dynamics in China. Defining a risk-index, we evaluate the risk of a secondary COVID-19 wave under different import patterns and different levels of control interventions. Using the epidemic data of Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, we first calibrated the proposed model. The main results show that the risk of a secondary peak in Shenzhen is much smaller than those in Beijing and Shanghai, while the risk in Shanghai is slightly lower than it in Beijing. Particularly, considering three levels of control interventions, we find that 1) the probability of a secondary epidemics in Beijing is always 0 if the control intervention keeps strict (with a minimum contact rate 1.07) no matter what the quarantine ratio of the imported cases; 2) the higher the quarantine ratio, the lower the probability of a secondary wave when the contact rate increases to 3.1 in three weeks; 3) the probability of a secondary wave becomes 58.3% even the quarantine ratio of the imported cases is 100%. Considering the situation in Shanghai or the impact of the imported asymptomatic cases, we obtained similar results. Therefore, in addition to continuing the strict control intervention, strengthening the management of immigration personnel and screening of asymptomatically infected is the key to preventing the occurrence of secondary epidemics. The main results provide the critical qualitative and quantitative decision-making basis for the prediction, early-warning and risk assessment of a secondary COVID-19 peak.