Modeling the Epidemic Dynamics of COVID-19 Outbreak in Iran

The COVID-19 impact on global health and economic system has been profound and unseen since the Spanish flu of 1918-19. Iran is one of the countries that has been severely affected partly because of slow responses to the crisis, ill-preparedness of the health system, and fragile health infrastructure and shortage of protective equipment due to economic sanctions. Due to shortcomings in the reported data, this note tries to estimate a model-based number of infected cases and examines the effectiveness of different policy responses to contain this crisis. Our results show that in an optimistic estimation, the number of unidentified cases can be 3 to 6 times more than the reported numbers. Social distancing alone cannot be an effective policy at this stage of pandemic unless at least 80 percent of the population confine themselves for an extended period of time. An alternative policy is to increase testing extensively and isolate identified cases actively combined with effective social distancing. Otherwise, many lives will be lost and the health system will collapse, adding to the ongoing economic crisis as a result of sanctions for many years to come.