Mathematical Modeling of the Current COVID-19 Epidemic and Potential Second Wave in Alberta to Improve Public Health Responses

就传播范围、总体发病率和死亡率以及巨大的经济影响而言，新冠肺炎已成为近年来世界上最严重、最致命的流行病之一。新冠肺炎大流行对所有受影响国家和司法管辖区的公共卫生系统进行了考验，取得了不同程度的成功和失败。随着各省计划开放和放松一些社会疏远措施，我们必须研究在应对加拿大当前流行病期间吸取的教训，并更好地为广泛预期的第二波做好准备。 在新冠肺炎大流行期间，数学模型已被世界许多司法管辖区的公共卫生机构作为预测规模、时间进程和对公共卫生和卫生系统的潜在影响的基本工具。数学建模的洞察力帮助公共卫生当局就公共卫生对当地流行病的反应做出基于证据的决策。 与艾伯塔省卫生署合作，拟议研究的主要目标是使用数学模型分析艾伯塔省的新冠肺炎数据，以确定导致与埃德蒙顿相比，卡尔加里新冠肺炎疫情规模更大的关键因素，以及艾伯塔省长期护理设施和肉类加工厂的大规模疫情。吸取的经验教训将有助于艾伯塔省卫生部门更好地为应对2020年秋季可能爆发的第二波新冠肺炎疫情做好公共卫生应对准备，并更有效地缓解另一场大规模疫情，防止在脆弱人群中爆发疫情。

The COVID-19 has shaped to be one of the worst and deadliest pandemics the world has seen in recent times, in terms of how widely it has spread, its overall morbidity and mortality, and its huge economic impact. The COVID-19 pandemic has put the public health systems of all impacted countries and jurisdictions to test, with a varying degree of successes and failures. As provinces plan to open up and relax some social distancing measures, it is imperative that we study the lessons learned during the responses to the current epidemics in Canada, and better prepare for the widely anticipated second waves. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mathematical modeling has been adopted by public health agencies in many jurisdictions around the world as an essential tool to forecast the scale, time course, and the potential impacts to the public health and health systems. The insights from mathematical modeling have assisted public health authorities to make evidence-based decisions on the public health responses to the local epidemics. In partnership and collaboration with Alberta Health, the main objectives of the proposed research are to analyzed the COVID-19 data in Alberta using mathematical models, to identify key factors that contributed to the much larger scale of the COVID-19 epidemic in Calgary in comparison to Edmonton, and the large outbreaks in long-term care facilities and meat processing plants in Alberta. Lessons learned will be valuable to Alberta Health to better prepare for its public health responses to the potential second wave of COVID-19 in the Fall of 2020, and more effectively mitigate another large scale epidemic and prevent outbreaks in vulnerable populations.