Investigating the effects of various control measures on economy and spread of COVID-19 in Turkey: a system dynamics approach

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which began in Wuhan in December 2019 has permeated all over the world in such a short time and was declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO). The pandemic that is erupting all of a sudden attracts the researchers to examine the spread and effects of the disease as well as the possible treatments and vaccine developments. In addition to the analytical models, such as compartmental modeling, Markov decision process, and so on, simulation and system dynamics (SD) are also widely applied in this field. In this study, we adopt the compartmental modeling stages to build an SD approach for the spread of the disease. A dynamic control measure decision support system (DSS) that varies depending on the number of daily cases is incorporated to the model. Furthermore, the economic loss in the gross domestic product (GDP) and workforce due to hospital stay and death caused by the COVID-19 are also investigated. The model is tested with various numerical parameters and the results are presented. The results on the spread of the disease and the associated economic loss provide meaningful insights into when control measures need to be imposed at which level. We also provide some policy insights, including some alternative policies, such as increasing awareness of people and vaccination in addition to control measures. The results reveal that the total number of cases and deaths is approximately 37% higher in the absence of dynamic DSS. However, everything comes at a price and applying such control measures brings about an increase in the economic loss about 47%.