Jean-François MATHIOT, chercheur CNRS au Laboratoire de Physique de Clermont (CPL) à Clermont-Ferrand
" What COVID-19 teaches us about modeling epidemics"
The COVID-19 epidemic is transmitted through the respiratory tract. This mode of transmission essentially depends on the social relationships between individuals, contrarily to epidemics in which the pathogenic element is transmitted over long distances, by water for instance. After a brief summary of the different types of models used so far to understand this epidemic, I will present a new model based on the percolation theory. It makes possible to integrate in a natural way the three characteristics of social relationships, relevant for the spread of the epidemic: their density, their intensity and their variety. Some results on the evolution of the epidemic in France since its beginnings will be discussed.
