Modeling for COVID-19 with the contacting distance

COVID-19 is a public health emergency for human beings and brings some very harmful consequences in social and economic fields. In order to model COVID-19 and develop the effective control measures, this paper proposes an SEIR-type epidemic model with the contacting distance between the healthy individuals and the asymptomatic or symptomatic infected individuals, and the immigration rate of the healthy individuals since the contacting distance and the immigration rate are two critical factors which determine the transmission of COVID-19. Firstly, the threshold values of the contacting distance and the immigration rate are obtained to analyze the presented model. Secondly, based on the data from January 10, 2020, to March 18, 2020, for Wuhan city, all parameters are estimated. Finally, based on the estimated parameters, the sensitivity analysis and the numerical study are conducted. The results show that the contacting distance and the immigration rate play an important role in controlling COVID-19. Meanwhile, the extinct lag decreases as the contacting distance increases and/or the immigration rate decreases. Our study could give some reasonable suggestions for the health officials and the public and provide a theoretical issue for globally controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.