Predicting the spread of covid-19 and the impact of government measures at the early stage of the pandemic: The Dutch case—Stricter but short-term measures are better

In this paper, we investigate the spread of COVID-19 and the impact of government measures at the early stage of the pandemic (before the introduction of the vaccines) in the Netherlands. We build a multiple linear regression model to predict the effective reproduction rate using key factors and measures and integrate it with a system dynamics model to predict the spread and the impact of measures against COVID-19. Data from February to November 2020 is used to train the model and data until December 2020 is used to validate the model. We use data about the key factors, e.g., disease specific such as basic reproduction rate and incubation period, weather related factors such as temperature, and controllable factors such as testing capacity. We consider particularly the following measures taken by the government: wearing facemasks, event allowance, school closure, catering services closure, and self-quarantine. Studying the strategy of the Dutch government, we control these measures by following four main policies: doing nothing, mitigation, curbing, elimination. We develop a systems dynamic model to simulate the effect of policies. Based on our numerical experiments, we develop the following main insights: It is more effective to implement strict, sharp measures earlier but for a shorter duration than to introduce measures gradually for a longer duration. This way, we can prevent a quick rise in the number of infected cases but also to reduce the number of days under measures. Combining the measures with a high testing capacity and with effective self-quarantine can significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19.