Potentials of constrained sliding mode control as an intervention guide to manage COVID19 spread

This work evaluates the potential of using sliding mode reference conditioning (SMRC) techniques as a guide for non-pharmaceutical interventions and population confinement to control the COVID-19 pandemic. SMRC technique allows robustly delimiting a given variable in dynamical systems. In particular, for the epidemio-logical problem addressed here, it can be used to compute day by day the contact rate reduction requirement in order to limit the intense care units occupancy to a given threshold. What is more, it could impose a given approaching rate to the health care system limits. Simulations are performed using the well-known SEIR model fitted to the Argentinian case to demonstrate what this control strategy sug-gests, while the effect of realistic period transitions between different confinement levels are also considered.