Optimal Control of the Coronavirus Pandemic with Impacts of Implemented Control Measures
Keywords:
Coronavirus, Epidemiological model, Objective functional, Optimality system, Pontryagin’s maximum principle, Disease prevalenceAbstract
This paper considers the current global issue of containing the coronavirus pandemic as an optimal control problem. The goal is to determine the most advantageous levels of effectiveness of the various control and preventive measures that should be attained in order to cost effectively drive the epidemic towards eradication within a relatively short time. Thus, the problem objective functional is constructed such that it minimizes the prevalence as well as the cost of implementing the various control measures subject to a model for the disease transmission dynamics which incorporates the existing controls. The optimality system of the model is derived based on Pontryagin's maximum principle while the resulting system is solved numerically using the Runge-Kutta fourth order scheme with forward-backward sweep approach. Findings from our results show that the new cases and the prevalence of the disease can be remarkably reduced in a cost effective way, if the specified optimal levels of effectiveness of the various preventive and control measures are upheld continuously for at least a month. Moreover, the results also show that the disease can be eventually eradicated if these effectiveness levels are sustained over a reasonable length of time.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
Similar Articles
- C. J. Ajaelu, O. Oyedele, A. A. Ikotun, E. O. Faboro, Safranin O dye removal using Senna fistula activated biomass: Kinetic, equilibrium and thermodynamic studies , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2023
- Bukola Oluwatosin Falomo, Olugbenga John Fenuga, Israel Olutunji Abiala, Unsteady MHD Casson nanofluid transport over an inclined permeable cylinder in an anisotropic porous medium: effects of nonlinear radiation and Joule heating , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 8, Issue 3, August 2026
- Haitham Qawaqneh, Waqar Afzal, Mujahid Abbas, Muhammad Tariq, Mehreen Shehzadi Khan, Siegfried Macías, Jorge E. Macías-Díaz, Hijaz Ahmad, Waleed Mohammed Abdelfattah, New fractional Hermite–Hadamard and Fejér inequalities involving special functions with applications to numerical quadrature rules , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 8, Issue 4, November 2026 (in progress)
- F. O. Aweda, J. A. Akinpelu, T. K. Samson, M. Sanni, B. S. Olatinwo, Modeling and Forecasting Selected Meteorological Parameters for the Environmental Awareness in Sub-Sahel West Africa Stations , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 4, Issue 3, August 2022
- C. A. Onate, I. B. Okon, J. A. Akinpelu, O. O. Ajani, O. A. Adedewe, B. B. Deji-Jinadu, Shannon entropy and thermodynamic properties of an inversely quadratic Yukawa potential model , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 6, Issue 4, November 2024
- S. N. Enemuo, O. N. Akande, M. O. Lawrence, I. C. Saidu, Optimized aspect level sentiment analysis of tweet data using deep learning and rule-based techniques , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 7, Issue 2, May 2025
- Matthew Iseh, Anthony Usoro, Nsisong Ekong, Idara Ukpe, Juxtaposing Vertically Transmitted Infections (VTIs) and the Spread of HIV/AIDS in a Typically Infection Prevalent Region in Nigeria , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 4, Issue 1, February 2022
- Philip Ajibola Bankole, Mabel Eruore Adeosun, Sunday Emmanuel Fadugba, Tolulope Fadina, Christopher Thron, Existence and uniqueness results for double jump fractional uncertain differential equations , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 8, Issue 2, May 2026
- Constantin Falk, Tarek El Ghayed , Ron van de Sand, Jörg Reiff-Stephan, A Data-Driven Approach Towards the Application of Reinforcement Learning Based HVAC Control , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2023
- E. P. Inyang, E. O. Obisung, P. C. Iwuji, J. E. Ntibi, J. Amajama, E. S. William, Masses and thermal properties of a Charmonium and Bottomonium Mesons , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 4, Issue 3, August 2022
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Omowumi F. Lawal, Tunde T. Yusuf, Afeez Abidemi, On mathematical modelling of optimal control of typhoid fever with efficiency analysis , Journal of the Nigerian Society of Physical Sciences: Volume 6, Issue 4, November 2024

