Abstract
Corona Virus (COVID-19) is a contagious disease. Unless an effective vaccine is available, various techniques such as lockdown, social distancing, or business Standard operating procedures (SOPs) must be implemented. Lockdown is an effective technique for controlling the spread of the virus, but it severely affects the economy of developing countries. No single technique for controlling a pandemic situation has ever returned a promising result; therefore, using a combination of techniques would be best for controlling COVID-19. The South asian association of regional corporation (SAARC), region contains populous and developing countries that have a unique social-cultural lifestyle that entails a higher rate of contact and R0. The per-capita income and economic conditions of these countries are dismal in comparison with those of advanced countries. With no lockdown policy, their healthcare systems would be unable to provide support. In this study, an intelligent smart lockdown strategy is proposed, which is dynamically implemented with the Susceptible, infectious, or recovered (SIR) model by calculating the R0 value after a certain number of days to implement multi-stage lockdowns with social distancing and SOPs for conducting business. Only 4.28% of the population of SAARC countries would be affected by COVID-19 after July 22,
Corona Virus (COVID-19) is a contagious disease. Unless an effective vaccine is available, various techniques such as lockdown, social distancing, or business Standard operating procedures (SOPs) must be implemented. Lockdown is an effective technique for controlling the spread of the virus, but it severely affects the economy of developing countries. No single technique for controlling a pandemic situation has ever returned a promising result; therefore, using a combination of techniques would be best for controlling COVID-19. The South asian association of regional corporation (SAARC), region contains populous and developing countries that have a unique social-cultural lifestyle that entails a higher rate of contact and R0. The per-capita income and economic conditions of these countries are dismal in comparison with those of advanced countries. With no lockdown policy, their healthcare systems would be unable to provide support. In this study, an intelligent smart lockdown strategy is proposed, which is dynamically implemented with the Susceptible, infectious, or recovered (SIR) model by calculating the R0 value after a certain number of days to implement multi-stage lockdowns with social distancing and SOPs for conducting business. Only 4.28% of the population of SAARC countries would be affected by COVID-19 after July 22, 2021 under the proposed strategy. Nearly 38% of the population would be affected after March 8, 2021 without lockdowns, whereas 18% of the population would be affected according to the simple SIR model after May 30, 2021. Furthermore, less than 1% of the population would be affected after April 13, 2021 under full lock down and recession. Thus, the proposed strategy shows promising long-term results for controlling COVID-19 without negatively affecting the economy.