Mathematical model of COVID spread in Russia presented in new publication
The work was undertaken by the Department of Computational Physics and Modeling of Physical Processes.
“It has been established that each wave of coronavirus infection contains a so-called critical value characterized by the corresponding moment in time and the number of cases. This critical value determines the beginning of the transition of the next wave of infection into the mode of explosive growth in the number of cases. The methodology created by us allowed us to identify regularities in the formation of coronavirus waves on the territory of the Russian Federation,” comments Department Chair Anatolii Mokshin. “As SARS-CoV-2 is a young virus, aspects related to its emergence and evolution, as well as to the pattern of spread of the infectious disease it causes in the human population and its ability to become epidemic are being actively studied by a large number of different research groups around the world at present. We are engaged in the study of complex systems whose evolution is determined and characterized by an infinitely large number of factors and parameters – so-called degrees of freedom. In this case, it is not fundamental what kind of nature this system is – physical, biological, economic, social or any other. Studies of such a system are carried out with the help of methods of mathematical physics. As it turns out, a number of fundamental concepts, as well as conceptual and mathematical apparatus formed in statistical physics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, can be extended in a certain way to the studies of arbitrary complex systems.”
According to the scientist, human society in COVID can be considered as a complex system, the evolution of which is characterized by such parameters as the number of newly diseased, the number of seriously ill patients, the number of detected patients, etc. To analyze such a complex system, KFU physicists proposed to use the methodology known in statistical physics and used to characterize and theoretically describe the kinetics of phase transitions and so-called activation-type processes. A number of regularities was found by the team based on COVID statistics in Russia and Tatarstan in 2020 – 2023.
With the help of the performed analysis and corresponding calculations, it was found that for each wave of coronavirus infection there are eigenvalues of the critical number of diseased people, at which the spread of the infectious disease enters the mode of explosive growth, as well as the moment of time from the beginning of the development of the next wave, at which the number of diseased people approaches the critical values. Finally, quite specific regularities in the values of critical characteristics for the sequence of COVID waves are revealed, indicating that the development of each subsequent wave depends significantly on the prehistory, i.e., on how the previous waves of infection proceeded and developed.