RAND, ASER Centre/Pratham Education Foundation and The Energy and Resources Institute will collaborate to jointly develop a COVID-19 decision-support tool for non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in India, based on the model built and launched by RAND in April 2020 for the United States. The present tool intends to use a similar model adapted to India, considering the Indian context of population mix, geographical and age distribution, health system capacity, population movement, and other relevant factors.
The model will estimate the impact of the various public health interventions on societal parameters over time (e.g., the number infected, the number hospitalized, the number of deaths, etc.) for selected geographies in India. Inputs for the model include a comprehensive list of public health interventions and their impact on disease transmission, feasibility, cost and tradeoffs at different stages of the epidemic in India. The qualitative assessment will guide the parameter estimation of contact mix and disease risks to produce epidemic patterns that help policy makers select interventions, choose when to implement the combinations of the interventions, and decide when they can be relaxed.
The project is in the fundraising phase.
