How the nature of behavior change affects the impact of asymptomatic coronavirus transmission

SARS-CoV-2 has caused severe respiratory illnesses and deaths since late 2019 and spreads globally. While asymptomatic cases play a crucial role in transmitting COVID-19, they do not contribute to the observed prevalence, which drives behavior change during the pandemic. This study aims to identify the effect of the proportion of asymptomatic infections on the magnitude of an epidemic under behavior change scenarios by developing a compartmental mathematical model. In this interest, we discuss three different behavior change cases separately: constant behavior change, instantaneous behavior change response to the disease’s perceived prevalence, and piecewise constant behavior change response to government policies. Our results imply that the proportion of asymptomatic infections which maximizes the spread of the epidemic depends on the nature of the dominant force driving behavior changes.