A new SAIR model on complex networks for analysing the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)

Nowadays, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is spreading around the world and has attracted extremely wide public attention. From the beginning of the outbreak to now, there have been many mathematical models proposed to describe the spread of the pandemic, and most of them are established with the assumption that people contact with each other in a homogeneous pattern. However, owing to the difference of individuals in reality, social contact is usually heterogeneous, and the models on homogeneous networks cannot accurately describe the outbreak. Thus, we propose a susceptible-asymptomatic-infected-removed (SAIR) model on social networks to describe the spread of COVID-19 and analyse the outbreak based on the epidemic data of Wuhan from January 24 to March 2. Then, according to the results of the simulations, we discover that the measures that can curb the spread of COVID-19 include increasing the recovery rate and the removed rate, cutting off connections between symptomatically infected individuals and their neighbours, and cutting off connections between hub nodes and their neighbours. The feasible measures proposed in the paper are in fair agreement with the measures that the government took to suppress the outbreak. Furthermore, effective measures should be carried out immediately, otherwise the pandemic would spread more rapidly and last longer. In addition, we use the epidemic data of Wuhan from January 24 to March 2 to analyse the outbreak in the city and explain why the number of the infected rose in the early stage of the outbreak though a total lockdown was implemented. Moreover, besides the above measures, a feasible way to curb the spread of COVID-19 is to reduce the density of social networks, such as restricting mobility and decreasing in-person social contacts. This work provides a series of effective measures, which can facilitate the selection of appropriate approaches for controlling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic to mitigate its adverse impact on people’s livelihood, societies and economies.